Clearly there have been no conservatives in the GOP for years. Call them what they are.
Deficits only mattered when YOUR money was not going into THEIR pockets. If they are out of power, then tax money is a waste. Once they are in power, they want to squeeze you for every penny - but call them Fees, certainly not taxes!
2
Don't worry - if a Democrat takes the White House, the GOP will discover our unsustainable profligacy, and demand cuts to everything but the military.
6
We need higher taxes to bring the deficit under control and pay for the programs that we need. This deficit is robbing our children and grandchildren to pay for our excesses. They have caught on to this: See the NYT article on "OK Boomer". Shame on us.
3
Courtesy of STL Fed:
Obama Deficit:
Started Presidency: $11.1 trillion
Ended Presidency: $19.85 trillion
Increased 78% or 7.5% per year
Not sure what conservatism is since Republicans started enacting the Koch Bros. Network economic libertarian agenda so long ago. Maybe a redux of Rockefeller Republicans is in order.
2
republicans have always been fake fiscal conservatives. the tax cuts they pass for the rich will cripple our country for decades. who will pay for the bill? the already beat down middle class. time for a revolution :)
Republicans are definitely far worse than Democrats when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility. They embrace tax cuts at all times, consistently try to increase military spending, and at all times attempt to gut social programs. Their hypocrisy on deficits is astounding, bad during Democratic administrations, harmless during Republican administrations.
However, members of both parties share responsibility for enacting policies, especially tax rules, that certainly had the efffect of increasing inequality and were arguably designed to do so. Across decades and administrations of both parties, the tax rules have been rigged for the rich, with some sizable leftovers tossed to the middle (e.g. the home interest mortgage deduction) and some crumbs tossed to the poor (the earned income tax credit).
You know why it went down after wwii? Taxes. Not one word about restoring the tax revenue that led to this in the first place. Social security and Medicare are not entitlement. I’ve been paying into that all my working life. You mess with that we will all be in the roads with our pitchforks!
Don’t even let the republicans start with this nonsense again. America has a fiat currency, it can’t go bankrupt. Trump could retire the debt by minting a coin if he wanted to.
Fear not, when the bill comes due for all the Republican wars and the never ending military spending, the Republicans will have a plan: Cut taxes for the rich to spur growth. Sure, it never worked before and never, ever will, but the real goal is to get wealth into the hands of the few and let the rest rot. That's the REAL Republican goal. What makes it so effective is that the Republican assault on public education has made voters stupid enough to believe their never ending lies.
1
Isn't it absolutely astonishing the level of hypocrisy the Republican Party can shoulder without breaking a sweat? The data proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Republicans simply know nothing about managing economy's, but know A LOT about breaking the nation's piggy bank over the back of the middle class and gifting all that falls from within to poor rich folks. It would be oh so very nice if the DNC can package all these facts, reminiscent of a stocking full of gold nuggets, into a nice bit-size campaign narrative to properly characterize this one trick pony of a phony political party.
Uh, maybe you didn't notice. American conservatism died in 2016. There is no conservative movement anymore. Just a few pundits like George Will, who nobody listens to anymore.
1
Does anyone believe anything that the Republican party says about anything?
If so, why?
2
The last annual budget signed into law by a US President was George Bush.
In its place we have a political football called a continuing resolution, affectionately known as a “CR”. Both parties ate to blame. It’s a great way for the minority party toget want 5hey want, Ms. Pelosi is the master. With the threat of a shutdown, the President usually has no choice, whether his name is Trump or Obama
Exactly .48 of every federal dollar is now spent on sponsored healthcare spread over six programs. Interestedly, all the candidates are promoting Medicare for all which would nearly double federal outlays along with other large entitlements. When asked if they would provide free medical care to all illegals, they all raised their hands.
That’s 22 million people according to 5ye latest estimates by MIT, those kids in Boston who are pretty good at math.
“Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around.”
Perhaps the first honest thing Rush has -ever- said on his show. His audience probably let that one go right by them, without considering that it points out the fundamental, core hypocrisy that underpins the entire "conservative" movement, Trump, Rush, Moscow Mitch - all of them. Scratch them lightly and you will find under the glossy spinning image they strive to project, a solid core of hypocrisy.
"Do as we say, not as we do."
"Those rules only apply to Democrats."
These are the *real* Republican "values". When they talk about "family values" - ask them about their president, married three times, and paying off porn stars and playmates 'on the side' for silence. Family values? Yet the evangelical "Christians" love him... core of hypocrisy, with an outer frosting of hypocrisy over it.
Remember when Republicans got upset because President Obama wore a tan suit? Now, is there *anything* that Trump could do that Republicans would say is "unpresidential"?
Hypocrites, through and through.
1
Since Republicans obviously don’t care about deficits and sticking future generations with the bill, I can only conclude that they don’t care about their own children and grandchildren. If I’m missing something in this simple analysis please inform me.
By the way, same thing goes for climate change denial and destruction of our environment—as if their own children don’t breath the same air and drink the same water as the Unwashed Masses like us? Nice GOPeople (chapeau to Socrates for that one).
We need a few pages in the NYT that quotes every republicans objection to Obama’s deficits
1
Republicanism=bad faith actors.
"Republicans are increasingly dependent on older voters to win elections, who in turn don’t want to see changes to Social Security and Medicare."
Are these the same older voters that are opposed providing legal status to undocumented immigrants and increasing the numbers of new legal immigrants? Such steps would increase the total number of people working on the books and thereby paying all payroll and income taxes. If we're going to be serious about sustaining Social Security and Medicare and making a dent in the budget deficit, there's no better way to do it.
3
The real culprit in this story is Ronald Reagan who embraced the Laffer Curve, a silly idea at best that claimed the government could raise more revenue from tax cuts than it could from tax increases. Nearly 4 decades of tax cuts later we are approaching a new benchmark in fiscal irresponsbility.
Another silly idea was the Balance the Budget amendment, as if the Constitution could make the president and Congress haggle out a balanced budget like robots.
The Republicans have not been serious about balancing the budget since the 1920s, when Calvin Cooledge kept his word on this issue and delivered us the Great Depression.
Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who has the courage to tell the truth about taxes and he stands on the shoulders of Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who made our country the envy of the world by raising taxes on the wealthy and creating a prosperous middle class through big government programs that worked.
A good example of privatization is the New York City garbage collection service. Martin Luther King was assasinated while campaigning for the rights of garbage workers in Memphis. He was right about that issue, like so many others.
The author falsely concludes that when the bill comes due for fiscal recklessness that consevatives will regret it. Quite the opposite will occur as it will be their opportunity to cut social security, Medicare and most other government services that they see no need for.
4
No, it’s not the deficit that is the existential threat to conservatives.
It is the intellectual dishonesty. On global warming. On the deficit and tax cuts. On Trump. The list goes on.
5
"With leading Democratic presidential candidates proposing tens of trillions of dollars of new federal spending, Republicans’ abdication of fiscal conservatism leaves Americans with no responsible party. "
Really? Prior to Reagan, there was bipartisan commitment to maintaining a reasonable fiscal balance. Since Reagan was elected, every Republican Administration has exploded fiscal deficits and piled on the national debt with "tax cuts" that would "pay for themselves". Every Democratic Administration since Reagan has reversed the trend; Clinton actually got us to fiscal surplus. Look it up.
So what, in the eyes of this columnist, would a "Responsible" party look like?
2
A sovereign government is fiscally responsible when it provides enough sovereign currency to employ all the resources available without inflation.
That is how the budget should be managed. The deficit is only important relative to inflation. If inflation is low then unemployed resources can be used for things the country needs (i.e.infrastructure, education, etc.) We have a lot of unemployed resources that could be doing this work and we need the government to spend so dollars are available for it.
2
Limbaugh wasn't exactly lying when he said: “Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around.”
Of course, his words need to be placed into the proper context, but he's flat out admitted that all the wailing and gnashing of teeth was for effect rather than based on deep seated ideological principles. I wonder if any of his listeners get that.
2
Conservative, liberal or middle of the road it doesn't matter. The reality of the ballooning deficit can only be interpreted as this country is heading towards a large, immovable, wall. And current practices by both parties are stomping on the accelerator towards it.
This is madness. If this was a game of chess I'd say the country is two moves away from being check-mated. The next move will be a sudden rise, globally, in interest rates, which is why the Fed is so intent in trying to drive it to zero.
Take that national deficit and consider what it means when you have to pay even a fair amount of interest against it? America, you are indentured.
Check-mate.
John~
American Net'Zen
As an American living in Germany, it has been refreshing to see real fiscal responsibility here. Germans want big social programs, and they are also willing to pay the taxes to make them happen. There is no equivalent to Republican campaigns for tax cuts at all here. Likewise, calls for social spending invariably come with plans for how to pay for them.
Why can't we be the same in the U.S.? One possibility is that our constituency-based political system rewards politicians who give the voters what they want rather than the more responsible stewards that political parties promote within their ranks. Another, related, possibility is that collectively as Americans, we are spoiled and entitled. We elect politicians who both cut our taxes AND yet keep spending high. This is irresponsible, and future generations will have to pay the bill for what we've given ourselves. We want to believe life will always be easy and that we deserve it to be this way. The election of a con-man who has sold this mirage to exploit people like a 19th century snake-oil salesman is unsurprising in this light.
The Republican calls for fiscal responsibility have long rung hollow, but the writer here is right to conclude that doesn't mean there shouldn't be real fiscal responsibility. This should not be a partisan issue.
I find the German system much more socially and fiscally responsible. They provide way more social support than the U.S., and they are willing to pay for it themselves in taxes.
2
"You can't take it with you"
Ideally we should try to time it such that we spend our last dollar just as climate change causes an apocalyptic extinction and the earth dies.
I’m being sarcastic of course. But if you look at the GOP’s behavior, it does provide insight into their worldview. They seem to assume that there won’t be a future. Or that they don’t give a hoot about what future generations will have to endure as a consequence of the decisions we make today.
2
The essence of the belief of conservatives is to prevent government services and aid like Obamacare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid from functioning efficiently so that the population won’t like them or rely on them.
This is why they don’t want to tweak them so that they would work better even if it didn’t cost much. It’s not the cost they hate, it’s the population liking and relying on them. God forbid the wealthy pay a bit more to assist the “undeserving”. This is why they fear Socialism and try and equate it with dictatorial Communism with the scary names of Lenin, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc. even though there’s no comparison. Is Denmark a Stalinist country? Sweden? Norway?
If Socialism’s so bad then we should get rid of all Social Security and Medicare. What’s more socialist than them? Half our country is just stupid to be so easily manipulated and frightened by the Republicans. They actually believe in the lie that Socialism is equal to Communism and vote for the super rich.
1
One major irony of Trump's legacy is that America will need many more immigrants.
We need more co-signers on our national debt.
1
I don't see this as a problem for Republicans at all. Having a huge deficit is a wonderful excuse to cut spending on public goods. Cuts to Obama-care, cuts to education, cuts to social security. The list is endless. There really is no daylight between the tea party and the Trump party. They are exactly the same people. They never really cared about deficits, what they always really cared about was making sure that black and brown people didn't get any taxpayer money. It's always been about that.
4
Gee, what a surprise. It turns out that the Republican tax cuts didn't pay for themselves and we were being lied to all along, just as I suspected. Color me not a bit surprised.
4
So Democrats maybe proposing trillions in spending but they are planning on paying for it with trillions in new revenue.
Isn't this better than Republicans proposing tax cuts which are paid for by ... lies about how they will pay for themselves?
If you think the issue is conservatives are self destructive in growing the debt. Imagine the damage they would do to themselves if they started cutting social security and medicare. AKA welfare for old red state republicans.
4
Regrettably, Trump rejected out of hand dealing with any entitlement programs during his 2016 campaign. Unfortunately, the next President or the one after that Is going to have to face the grim reality of bankruptcy of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We can’t keep kicking the can down the road.
1
Elect responsible people. Do not swallow claims from candidates that seem only politically based. Pay attention to candidates and their interests and backgrounds.Learn to recognize spin. Learn to recognize reality. The ability to see through to the truth is partly experience and partly education. The quality of the people that represent us is extremely important. We have to hold up our own end- voting for the best people. Do not let politics get in the way of electing good people. Choose wisely. Everything depends upon it.
2
Yes, not caring about govt deficits is a moral outrage. Like not caring about children.
Too many people give Clinton credit for the last budget surplus - it was Clinton plus a GOP Congress (I hate to say) plus economic expansion. Deficits are always a combo of Congress and Presidents - presidents have much less power than most people seem to assume, for some odd reason - over the economy, over the Federal budget etc.
Yes, raise taxes a bit as some have suggested, and hold the GOP accountable for its crazy unaccountability to Americans. It is either cynical, or simply incompetent, or both. In this economy, deficits should be zero.
1
Federal budget deficits are not an existential threat as long the rate of economic growth exceeds the interest on the debt. They are a threat to social services because Republicans have always used deficit reduction as an excuse to cut social services (never the military). Rather than raise taxes on the wealthy to keep deficit spending under control their remedy is consistently to do it on the backs of those who need help most. We can be sure that as soon as a Democrat is elected President the deficit will again be a rallying cry for Republicans.
4
The GOP attacked the deficit during the time of President Obama because they saw the safety net protecting those who needed help the most. But when their rich patrons getting huge tax breaks and the military exploding deficits no longer matter. What else can make clearer GOP motivations? When a democrat takes the presidency the GOP will resume its amnesia and scream about the deficit which will assuredly shrink as it did under President Obama and President Clinton. but never mind. GOP crocodile tears would float an air craft carrier.
4
All the posters that I have read, at least so far, start with the bedrock assumption that the federal deficit is a debt like their mortgage. Nothing could be further than the truth. The deficit is simply the difference between US Currency spent into the private economy - via direct federal spending or via public and private loan creation indirectly funded via the Federal Reserve - and what is removed from the private economy via taxes. Federal deficit = private surplus. Attempts to pay down the deficit actually take money *away* from the private economy. Furthermore, the federal "debt" is held in US Treasury Bills which can only be redeemed for U.S. dollars, which are solely issued by the U.S. Government.
Once you understand these facts, you quickly realize that The U.S. Government is not revenue constrained, nor can it ever default on its "debt" (other than voluntarily). The real constraints on federal spending are scarcity of real resources and human capital. The real risk is in NOT deficit spending when necessary to advance the needs of the future. The debt we leave to our children can be a number on a scoreboard (the deficit) or it can be a reality of crumbling infrastructure, poor health outcomes, and inadequate education. You choose.
@Fred Once you understand the accounting and economics behind the numbers, there is one additional thing, our fiscal policy is political and ideological.
We have enough resources, innovation and ingenuity to have a productive and balanced economy.
2
Not to mention the author. Don't fall for this kind of unexamined pseudo-analysis.
@Fred
By your logic there is no limit on the size of our deficit - according to you it does not matter.
You must be a huge Liz Warren fan.
In 2016, as a candidate, Mr. Trump said he could eliminate the national debt in about eight years.
Yet as president, Mr. Trump has piled on about $3 trillion to the debt, bringing the total to $22.9 trillion. What’s amazing is that he has managed to increase deficits at a time of historically low unemployment and relative peace, when one would expect the national balance sheet to improve.
Republicans are noticeably silent.
The hypocrisy of Republicans is nothing new.
It is so common that we ignore it since its no surprise.
We expect it to take place on a daily basis and in some cases, hourly.
Rest assured that the Republicans will be up in arms if a Democrat becomes president and deficits continue to mount or don't drop considerably. It's the Republican way.
3
@Magan
Tax revenue under Trump is up 25% - for each of his three years.
Clearly we need to reduce spending.
He is trying to do that. He is trying to bring our troops home. He is trying to get NATO countries to pay what they are required to. He has 1 million fewer people on food stamps. He has tried to reduce taxpayer support to undocumented immigrants. He is attacked by Liberals one each of these efforts.
Which of your benefits could be cut?
How much could your federal taxes be increased?
@Dr. John
"Tax revenue under Trump is up 25% - for each of his three years."
Not even close to being the case. Revenue has barely increased under Trump due to the unnecessary tax cut. Coupled with Trump's increase in spending, deficits are growing faster than the ability to service cost--60% increase in the deficit in just the last two years.
With low unemployment, the budget shoudl be closed to balanced. But the GOP and Trump don't care about future generations.
FY 2019 - $3.44 trillion, estimated.
FY 2018 - $3.33 trillion.
FY 2017 - $3.32 trillion.
FY 2016 - $3.27 trillion.
FY 2015 - $3.25 trillion.
1
@Dr. John
LOL
Once again we see a so-called fiscal conservative warning about the dangers of Medicare and Social Security without any acknowledgement that the US military spending is through the roof. We continue to ignore the biggest elephant in the room.
1
At 75 years old I can only hope that the United States does not go bankrupt before I die.
My pension will likely disappear if American debt reaches untenable levels and Republican members of Congress will undoubtedly insist that social security retirement be cut.
The fiscal irresponsibility by both republicans and democrats in past years leaves unemployed retired Americans with no where to turn for help.
2
Social security and medicare are paid for from payroll taxes, matched each by employee and employer. Demographics can make them wince, but are predictable and cna be adjusted. Once these were trusts and separate from the general fund. We consolidated the self finding trust funds with the rest of government spending. Often having surpluses their assets were consolidated with the general funding of government. For awhile the surpluses on paper hid deficit spending en mass. The treasury borrowing from the trusts was a double book keeping scam. It was borrowing from entities that were taxing payrolls, thus the ignorant and not the rich-a continuing pot of cash very few politicians could afford the necessary integrity to not use to juice up spending.
This article, with out a blush says the deficits of today are caused by social security and medicare. I say separate them from the general budget as the once were because they had their own funding system and if you dont like deficits then see more accurately what is really the general fund and the taxes needed to pay our collective bills. The deficits are higher than published.
3
The deficits have always been fine with conservatives as long as they were the ones who were funnelled the taxpayer money.
2
As a retired expatriate American living in France that is unemployed and living off a pension I pay all my income taxes to America according to a treaty between France and the United States.
When I turned 65 I inquired about Medicare and was told I had to purchase Plan B, an additional coverage for Medicare insurance. Despite paying for plan B and paying all my income taxes to America I was informed that I could not use my Medicare outside the United States because I am an expatriate.
Congress has refused for years to correct this unfair discrimination against expatriate Americans despite being asked numerous times.
Unemployed retired Americans who choose to retire in a foreign country should be able to use their hard earned Medicare regardless of where they live!
4
@Michael Kittle I totally agree. And judging by the low cost, excellent quality medical care that I receive in Mexico, you would think the US government would be glad to outsource Medicare and save money in the process.
3
@Michael Kittle
Some basic research would have prevented your issues.
Philip Klein's call for fiscal responsibility in the face of ballooning federal deficits in boom times may seem sensible, but his flawed view of government ignores the ethical point of view.
Ethically, we can appreciate that all its victims have better ethical claims on its assets than those aiding and abetting it by loaning it huge amounts of money, motivated by desires for more.
Its victims cut a wide and vast swath -- immigrant children separated from their parents, blacks subjected to police terrorism, innocent Iraqis killed or maimed, minorities subjected to unequal treatment in its schools or legal system, including those who did not deserve to be caged under mass incarceration programs, descendants of slaves, innocent Americans spied upon by secretive government agencies, surveillance that has alarmed the ACLU, etc.
Ethically, those who aided and abetted government should not benefit from their evil acts, but should be held responsible for compensating the victims of government -- and certainly not rewarded with billions or trillions of your hard earned money.
2
Deficits? The tax-cut and spend-on-the-rich Republicans have a plan for that - destroy Obamacare, Social Security and all tax payer paid for entitlements the rich don't pay for but expect to profit from as they're gutted to reap savings in additional tax cuts.
Of course the Republican plan still increases the debt astronomically - but that's part of the plan since the rest of us are on the hook for it. The kleptocrats are the ones gambling with the futures of younger generations - financially and environmentally.
Funny signs with "Take your hands out of my pockets" - they don't realize it's the wealthy intercepting the money for themselves before it reaches their pocket. Indeed, Obama's trillion dollar deficits were a result of paying off and bailing out the rich, not the rest of us, in order to save our economy. The rich - like Romney, as one of the 0.47% moochers - became richer during the recession as the rest of us lost jobs, homes, health care until Obamacare.
"What’s amazing is that he has managed to increase deficits at a time of historically low unemployment" AND a booming economy and profits which should be generating surplus tax revenue.
At least Democrats are both fiscally and socially responsible by clawing back "tens of trillions" of evaded tax revenue by the rich to spend for American society's benefit.
When "the bill for decades of fiscal recklessness comes due" the rich will never pay even a tiny bit of the ruinous tax increases imposed on the rest of us.
2
Conservatives since Buckley have evaded specifying what "real" Conservatism is, except that it isn't what their political opponents want, and it is absolutely anything they need it to be. So it's not socialism, but it is government intervention in the markets and weaponized Keynesianism. And it's rigid fidelity to the language of the Construction unless the language includes "equal" and "protection" and a "more perfect Union." And surely it's demanding a balanced budget unless, well...
Conservatism is fear given voice by, and used by, hypocrites. Their current silence on the deficit isn't a threat to Conservatism. Nothing can "threaten" what isn't there in the first place.
7
@Next Conservatism Spot on. Thanks.
1
The author's assertion that Republicans have been fiscally responsible at any point since 1970 is either hypocritical or embarrassingly misinformed. Just look at the debt ratio to GDP over time curve and plot the Presidential parties on the time line. The Republicans have spent more money than Democrats, and have enacted policies that decrease government revenue. The reason the deficit rose under Obama is the economy W left him was a rapidly sinking ship. The only President since 1970 to reverse the trend was Clinton.
Republicans use the military industrial complex and regressive tax cuts to pull a reverse robin hood on a society wide scale whenever they are in power.
10
Federal deficit under:
Reagan: $78.9 increased to $152.6.
HW Bush: Increased deficit to $255 billion
Clinton: Left office with a 128.2 billion surplus
GW Bush: Turned a 128.2 billion surplus into a $1.41 trillion deficit
Obama: Halved the deficit to about $584.6 billion
Trump: We are quickly headed to a $1.1 trillion deficit this year.
* Numbers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
The problem isn't democrats. It's not Trump per se. It is conservative policies and the apparent inability of those who push them to either do the research and understand the numbers, or be truthful. The information is out there, easy to find, verifiable. None of them seem to care to read it or believe it. I guess blaming "the other guy" is a lot easier.
9
One Reality NYTimes subscribers do not understand is Old White Rural Americans do not like Young and Middle Aged Able Bodied White Rural Americans getting handouts. They do not like seeing the drug addict in the trailer collecting Unemployment, while working side jobs, maybe dealing drugs, and certainly not being a great parent to their growing brood of children living as well or better than they are going to their job, while Help Wanted signs abound. To always assume OWRVs do not want urban folks getting money from the Govt, when they see "Immoral" rural white folks getting money from the Govt. is assigning racism where it doesn't always exist.
1
So, okay Trump is responsible for our deficit after less than three years in office.
That means Obama is responsible for doubling our deficit after being in the WH for eight years. In fact he grew the deficit by more than all other Presidents combined.
1
@Dr. John
But half of that came from Bush's terrible economic plans. Bush crashed the economy and kept the two wars off the books.
Obama went and put the wars on the books like they should have been from the beginning. And had to clean up bush's economic mess.
That is why Obama was stuck with adding to the debt. His economic programs lessen the deficits that bush had increased. And then trump came along and increased the deficits and debt.
Republicans have always increased deficits while democrats decrease them.
3
@ Dr John. Please go learn some basic economics where you will learn the difference between the words “debt” and “deficit”, and learn what happens when you inherit the worst recession since the 1930s.
2
“Mr. Obama’s run of deficits exceeding $1 trillion helped fuel the Tea Party. ”
Conservative writers like to start with a lie and build on it. The Tea Party was fueled by racism and millions invested by the Koch Bros. Without that, it never would have happened. Pretending that there was an actual ideology thoughtfully arrived behind it is just more of the same disinformation. Sic semper “conservative” “intellectuals.”
8
The factual record aside, we have a Trump electorate that is intractably ensconced in a netherworld of fallacy. No amount of fact or truth-saying about the GOP's fiscal record can penetrate this bubble ... short of yet another GOP inspired crisis.
I fear that this is exactly were we are headed.
4
@JH
The Federal budget originates in the House.
The House is under the control of Democrats.
What have they done recently to reduce the deficit?
@Dr. John
No it doesn't. The president submits an FY budget to Congress early each year and sets the tone with estimates of federal government income and spending for the upcoming fiscal year and also recommends funding levels for the federal government. It should come as no surprise that real deficit growth under GOP tenures over the post WWII period since Ike far exceeds the Dems. The GOP, de facto, has been the deficit party for a very long time.
1
Anything they do has to pass the Senate, and Moscow Mitch spits on anything that comes out of the House for fear it might help the Dems. Just as he kept Obama from enacting any stimulus that might end the Great Recession, because he wanted to use the Recession he himself started to beat Obama with.
2
It's almost as though conservatives aren't actually principled when it comes to economics. They only use deficits and spending as a wedge issue when they are in the minority. It's just empty rhetoric, as with their positions on many other issues from healthcare (where's the practicable plan to replace the ACA), the environment (how did cap-and-trade devolve into climate denial), and traditional values (how many wives have been cheated on by the President, his lawyer, etc.).
Democrats are not perfect, but they at least try and hold their own accountable.
Republicans only offer promises that turn out to be empty when the rubber actually has to hit the road. They constantly move the goalposts to avoid accountability and conjure up fake crises to distract their base (Obama's tan suit, Starbucks Cups). When their promises are not just empty words, they're worse; they are racist (stop and frisk, the war on drugs), infamously bad (Iraq, what's happening with Turkey), or just problematic (deregulation that led to the financial crisis, trickle down economics, welfare to work, opposing equality and protection from discrimination).
7
Sad to think that under Al Gore's plan, the debt would have been paid off instead of being 24 Trillion dollars and rising. This is entirely the fault of the Republicans. They convinced Alan Greenspan to allow them to cut taxes because the government was collecting too much money. Unlike Reagan who increased taxes when the deficits ballooned, today's spendthrift Republicans will bankrupt this country and send the entire middle class into the poverty class.
4
I’m with Krugman,
Not with Klein,
(Paul De Grauwe
May explain!)
Maybe some future presidential candidate will campaign on the "no new taxes" slogan, and then follow George H W Bush's pragmatism in the face of reality, and raise taxes.
The title of Mr. Klein's book is incomplete. He left off the role the Republicans have played in bringing about the dystopian future he predicts in his book. A much more accurate title would be, "Fear Your Future: How the Deck is Stacked Against Millennials and Why Socialism Would Make It Worse, and How It's the Republicans Fault."
And he also neglected, in his discussion of the level-headed and fair-minded Rush Limbaugh, that Limbaugh has not only embraced deficit spending but did this only after decades of fiercely -- and unfairly -- faulting Democrats for deficit irresponsibility, which points to Limbaugh's complete sycophantic prostration before Trump. Lastly, Klein uses the favorite move of the political charlatan these days -- drawing a false equivalence between Democratic and Republican policies -- the Republicans in the silence over the Trump tax cuts and the Democrats in their calls for increased social safety net programs. The Democratic candidates most in favor of increasing the social safety net make it very clear that they will pay for it by rolling back the Trump tax cuts, imposing slight tax increases on the very rich, and implementing a trading tax on market transactions.
Be afraid of Mr. Klein, be very afraid.
2
Full stop.
Social security and medicare are paid for by workers. If these funds aren't up to the task, then let's raise taxes until they are. There's no reason why the glitterati can escape their responsibility to pay approprite taxes.
2
@Zeke27
How much do 70M Medicaid recipients pay into the program.
@Zeke27
You need to pay more for SS and Medicare. The glitterati should not have to pay anymore than they currently do for you. You probably don’t know how SS works as the ‘poor’ already get far more back than they ever contribute. This is not the case for the wealthy.
FICA is a proportional tax until the limit (Appx 130k) then it becomes regressive. Raise the limit to a million so the wealthiest can pay their fair share.
1
All US Government Spending Originates in the House of Representatives.
Time out.
The truth is that all spending must originate in the House of Representatives.
If the House decides to adopt the President’s budget then the President has something to do with it.
But if the House does not adopt the President’s budget or priorities, then the President really has no part to play.
The Republicans are playing the long game. When they’re in power they can run up the debt, knowing that when they leave power they can blame that debt on the Democrats, and use it to limit the Dems’s spending. Best of both worlds. They can spend on as much as they’d like on the military, pass enormous spending bills, lower taxes for the wealthy, and then treat the result not as a burden on the country but as a weapon against their foe.
1
Deficits doubled during the Obama presidency.
The blame though is not entirely on him; he only signed bills approved by Congress that increased spending.
@Dr. John
The GOP Great Recession really cut the tax revenues. That is what happens during recessions. Especially if one is labeled "Great".
3
@gratis
That’s what happens when politicians demand everyone must be allowed to
own homes - even if they cannot afford the monthly payments.
@Dr John, I think what you meant to say is that is what happens when bankers don't have to abide by reasonable regulations, and let their greed get the better of them. You want to blame the MBSes and CDOs that precipitated the disaster on politicians, but they were designed, created, marketed and sold by bankers.
3
"The Congressional budget office projects that by 2028 sovereign debt would be equal to 96% of our GDP." leave aside the polemic of who is what, I learned in the class room what extent reckless borrowing by the Government ramify the life and economy of a Nation. Mild budget deficit or ready-to-play-borrowing, I consider, tonic to growth of the economy; albeit deficit and debt during Donald Trump's presidency is caused primarily by unprecedented tax-cut to the delight of tiny segment of the wealthy resulting in scanty revenue and impoverishment of the National treasury. Notwithstanding the economy was performing remarkably well . Nominal GDP grew as high as 3.5% in a developed country like US in the third quarter of 2018 and the rate of unemployment went historically low. The shock and owe to the economy, much talked about topic of today, sprouted with Trump's isolationist policy and win less war of attrition on trade with China, the duo considered rightly as growth engine of the global economy. I mind to write more on the subject, come the day!
S. A. Samad USA
Watch out for the polemics saying that tax revenues are up under Trump. They are talking about raw numbers without any adjustments for inflation or population growth.
It is like saying a child from age two to five gained 25% more weight and everything is fine. But, in actuality the child should have gained 50% or more in weight.
Even hibernating bears know about how much weight they need to gain to survive the winter.
1
@Mark Smith
@Mark Smith
In less than three years of Trump, inflation and population growth caused federal tax revenue to increase by almost 25%?
Impossible.
@Dr. John The latest numbers show an annual increase in revenues of 2.7% from 3.3 trillion to 3.4 trillion.
@Dr. John Where are you getting your numbers from?
1
Can we at least agree that tax cuts don't reduce deficits?
Regan doubled it, Bush 2 wars and lowered taxes twice, Trump lowers taxes. Conservatism to me means borrow and spend then blame the Democrats who try to raise revenue to lower the debt
3
There is nothing conservative about Federal government debt.
Nothing. How dare they call themselves conservative? The last two presidents that actually tried to do something about the National Debt were Ford and Clinton. And each was followed by a tax cutting , 'conservative' president. And now we have another 'conservative' president.
Conservative my foot !!! The current conservative president has again raised the national debt with another ''trickle down' tax cut. This current 'conservative' president is a three time,,is it ten times,?, twenty ?, adulterer. Oh there is a conservative value for you. And he is the darling ,, "99% of Evangelicals support him" ??
And "Existential" ?? Existential,,, ruinous student loans,, medical costs through the roof,,, but the biggie,, and this is a direct result of borrowing the nation's wealth to pay for nothing,,, Business and industry,, and manufacturing run,, only run,, only are fueled by,, money. If you really try to function,, grow, innovate,, manufacture,, along side of a money black hole that is sucking up every dime to loan that there is,,,, well,,, you cannot.
And last but certainly not least,, the bill is being handed to our children and grand children,,,, this is a conservative value,, let your grand babies pay for your lack of spendthrift ways. Refuse to pay your own bills.. Boy that IS Conservatism.
Hillary Clinton is far more conservative than the current crop of so called 'conservatives'. Fact.
3
For the love of god stop publishing these clowns who don’t know anything. We do not face a fiscal crisis. Japan has 2x as much debt as us and lower interest rates. Repeat after me there is no debt crisis. No this doesn’t mean you can spend whatever you want indefinitely. But the US faces a persistent demand shortfall and is badly in need of investments in infrastructure, child care, and education. We don’t need to worry about deficits when real interest rates are zero. What we need to stop doing is giving tax cuts to billionaires and use that money to invest in the US.
3
More nonsense from the same right that caused all the deficits. That Klein thinks he can still use that canard to scare people with “socialism” show how bankrupt of rational thought the whole conservative movement has become. Next time someone tries to scare you about socialism remember the following:
BUT FOR SOCIALISM
- You would not eat or drink.
- You would have no access to water much less clean water.
- You would not drive.
- You would have no roads or street and highway repairs.
- You would not fly and there would be no airports or air traffic controllers.
- You would live in your own sewage and filth.
- You would have no police services and no court system.
- You would have no fire services.
- You would have no public education.
- There would be no space program.
- There would be no cell phone technology or computers. (Their discoveries/development funded through the military-industrial complex’s ravenous appetite for taxpayers money.)
- There would be no ice cream.
- There would be no military. (Not that our military has done anything to keep Americans safe here in the US since 1945.
- You would not enjoy professional sports and there would be no no professional sports stadiums (this socialism however is for the benefit of the rich only).
- There would be no doctors (All doctors are trained for 5 years as interns through payments from Medicare.
- Most medical cures like for polio would never have been discovered.
- The list of things is far too big to cover here
4
@DSD
How is Venezuela doing on the above?
@Dr. John
That was not true socialism.
The deficit? What about it?
“It’s a great talking point when you have an administration that’s Democrat-led,” said Rep Mark Walker (R-NC). “It’s a little different now that Republicans have both houses and the administration.”
1
Correction:
The Congress is responsible for the budget, not Trump.
The House is controlled by Democrats - they have the power and responsibility to make cuts to the budget and propose tax increases.
Back in the day Republican policy was NOT conservatism. Conservatism is relatively new concept. See William Buckley's mission statement in the first issue of “National Review (1955) stating that his mandate was to stand “athwart history, yelling Stop.”
Regarding Republican "fiscal responsibility":
“You know, Paul, Reagan proves that deficits don’t matter. We won the mid-term elections. This is our due.” Former Vice-president Dick Cheney
“Republicans care deeply about deficits, unless they’re caused by tax cuts. Then they don’t give a damn.” Norm Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute
1
Mr. Klein is right that both parties are responsible for our ballooning debt. However, it was Democrats who passed the big 3 entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) that are the unquestioned drivers of the national debt. It is Democrats who fiercely opposed any suggestion that entitlement spending be cut.
Until both Democrats and Republicans acknowledge publically that entitlement programs are the problem and cooperate to cut them, no progress is possible.
So does this mean The Librationists...uh, The Libreticists, no...The Libertines...The..what the heck?...Librarians...The, The Liberians...ooh! got it...The Libertarians are gonna be our friends now?
Because, cool!
Super cool.
1
We the People want Mr. Trump to pay for his golf vacations and hidden war of Saudi Arabia.
4
@Steven of the Rockies
Also pay the cities for the cost of the Trump rallies. Dead beat Trump is reneging on the deal and his debts. It is what endears him to his followers.
1
Oh, bull. Trump is the natural endpoint of conservatism. What on earth did you expect, everyone going to church and chanting “USA! USA!” or something?
2
So to sum it all up, republicans aren't good with money, are okay with a president trying to "shake down" a foreign leader for personal gain, are okay with kids in cages, are okay cutting, running and betraying allies, and, are all okay with the grifting and corruption going on. It indeed is a big tent party -
4
This alarmist pretends he calling out the hypocrisy of the GOP, but fails to mention Reagan/Bush, and then can't help but mention his real targets: Social Security and Medicare.
Another snake oil salesman.
1
You Times columnists should get your stories straight. Paul Krugman, who has won some sort of Nobel prize related to economics, responding to a comment expressing fear over the debt, dismissed fears about the budget deficit saying that national fiscal responsiblity was not that important. He reiterated that in his column today.
"Let me be clear here: I’m not complaining about the lack of panic over our trillion-dollar deficit. We shouldn’t be panicked."
Would you two like to settle your differences in private?
What a waste of space. Please refer to Paul Krugman in yesterday's and today's columns. The deficit is what we basically owe ourselves. You might as well tell us tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves and all we need to do is have faith in Ronnie Rayguns Bushwacker junior Paul Ayn Rand Ryan Laugher Curve Trickle Down Econ. My 15 year old could write a better econ column than this. Your credentials again are, what?
1
Can you spell hypocrite? How about 'Republican', Conservative', or 'Tea Party'? They have always been hypocrites; Pro-life but not pro-kids, pro budgeting but only for the poor, against entitlements but only those for poor people, and so on. We all know what they stand for: Themselves!
4
Fiscal conservatives were all white nationalists with very few exceptions.
1
Bush increased the deficit through incompetence and downright stupidity. Obama increased it to resurrect the country from eight years of the three stooges. Just when the deficit was falling, unemployment was falling, and everything was improving; along came Mr. Bankruptcy, Donald Trump. The numbers tell the tale. Statistics speak the truth. Trump is incompetent and those that support him are spineless. Through impeachment or electing any Democrat at all, America has to rid itself of this pestilence.
2
Only the naive (and the lamestream media) believed that the Tea Party had anything to do with budgets and debt. It was always about FOBP (fear of a black president).
3
If the voters ever exacted a penalty for political lying and hypocrisy they surely do not exact one now. Nothing else explains the rampant hypocrisy and lying by current day politicians.
1
Wow. All that can be said of this editorial and argument is that it is weak, just embarrassingly weak.
Regarding the botched news stories you allude to at the end of this piece, are those all the wrong stories on FOX, Breitbart, and other conservative organs that need to be corrected? The correction section in most mainstream news outlets is pretty brief.
Hypocrisy, thy name is...
"Trump’s Deficits Are an Existential Threat to Conservatism"
Hip hip, Hooray! Hip Hip Hooray!
Anything that destroys the treasonous conservatives is OK.
1
it's time to go after the boundry less multi-national corporations...make them pay their fair share...…….
1
Shameless as usual.
Conservatism relishes the chance to kill social security Medicare and Medicaid by saying the debt is too big.
Evil doers. Dishonest scheming hypocrite evil doers.
2
Nixon, Reagan, Bush , W, the CriminalTrump. Got spends stupidly on wars and tax cuts and leave it to the Dems to clean the place up. Hopefully with the extraction of the Trump Crime Cabal there will be no more GOP for a few decades.
2
Same old.
1
The National Debt and Deficit did not fuel the Tea Party, racism did. Let us let that myth die a proper death. Funny enough, when the black man left the White House, the Tea Party miraculously faded away. The rich, GOP backers did not need to support them anymore.
1
Hey "Tea Party" old Ted Cruz your Tea Party darling has jumped on the Trump Train. It's good to know you guy's are so "open minded." Well maybe hypocrites is a more apt description.
1
Rush Limbaugh!??
He still on the air?? I thought he was locked up on drug charges and had to go to rehab a couple of times? I think the drugs have affected his mental capacity.
You know what people like him say...next it will be meth and then heroin. Keep Rush away from your kids.
Rush isn't right!
1
conservatism is DEAD. All of the double dealing and hypocrisy killed it - BYE BYE.
Credibility here: Zero
I wish this article was on Fox TV!
1
Every time there is a Republican in the White House the red ink skyrockets. This is not by accident. It's "the 2 Santa Claus theory" at work. Oh, and by the way, republican voters, you have only yourselves to blame.
1
The passed the largest 1%, corporate tax cut in history. They raised taxes on those over 65, and most working Americans, by getting rid of exemptions and State/Local Tax Deductions. Not to mention deductions for s second mortgage. They are back to deficits don't matter.
If they manage to regain the House, keep the Senate, and keep a Republican in the White House; rest assured deficits will matter gain. They already have massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare planned to reduce deficits on all those lazy bum takers like myself. I am a lazy bum because I am receiving, what this newspaper, and the GOP called "entitlements". N need to work until I drop dead and pay fro health insurance that will eat up all of my income to pay for it. But, at least they will lower the deficit, me and all the other lazy bums, will die an early death and decrease the surplus population. But, I will be assured that babies are safe in the womb.
Hypocrisy is the only way to describe these supposed Christians.
3
If Conservatives were an intelligent, rational, consistent, and principled bunch of people, a raging buffoon like Trump would have no effect on them. But it is their ignorance, hypocrisy, and spinelessness that allows them to be whipsawed by this train wreck of a Presidency.
1
Government, meet Grover Norquist's bathtub.
2
What else could you expect from a political party that has sold this lie for 40 years to a gullible (stupid?) American electorate:
Tax cuts pay for themselves.
No they don't and never will.
It's astonishing to me that any sentient voter could vote for this nonsense.
Each and every day, I think less and less of American voters and despair for our country.
1
The GOP have done the country no favors since they decided to endorse and enable..The Worst President in American History!! How UNAMERICAN to have endorsed a candidate who was lewd rude and crude and criticized everyone including a former POW! The GOP are directly responsible for the mess our Democracy is in today !! We'll be paying the price for their Trump endorsement for a long time to come!! Trump support is now and has always been ...UNPATRIOTIC !!! MAGA?? What a Mess !!
1
Republicans, hypocrites all the way, are responsible for the exploding deficit, with Trump in full concurrence. This will make life for the next generation more miserable. How irresponsible is that?
1
I am sick to death of this insincerity. Number one, the deficit matters and the debt does not. To mention both in the same article is disingenuous. Professor Krugman has spelled this out already. Republicans are in general, mean old white guys who hate the idea of helping people who are not rich and really really hate the idea when the person being helped is not white. Is McConnell asking that the tax cuts be repealed because they caused 300 billion in red ink? Which GOP guy in the entire group is talking about working with Democrats in order to repeal the tax cuts because of the "staggering debt"? Please let's quit this lying game. If it means taking money from rich white people, not one of these lying "hawks" ever lifts a finger against government aid. Their only concern is when the government help the middle class and the poor. History since 1980 is crystal clear: the minute they get an opening the GOP increases deficit spending and gives the money to the well off. How can the NY Times give Krugman a column; he busts the lying GOP and then you give this Klein guy space to lie for the rich some more?
Which Tea-Publican should be placed on the trillion dollar bill? My vote is former representative Mick Mulvaney, though retired with sweet lifetime entitlement package Paul Ryan is a close second.
1
Looks like Trump wants to bankrupt America, so our government can sell our assets for .1 cent on the dollar to their plutocrat gangster friends like the Soviets did.
2
This column brought to you by the Koch Foundation.
There is NOTHING conservative about Trumpists. They seek to deny any minority or woman any thing other than slavery. They are fascists and would gladly work everyone ELSE to death.
1
Hypocrisy of the Republicans knows no bounds!!!
1
The Tea Party fanatics have converted to Trumpism.
Sad.
1
OK for us but not for you: definition of a hypocrite.
1
Deficits ase bad only if caused by Democrats or left wingers. Same thing
1
Surely, no one should be surprised. Remember Cheney's 'deficits don't matter' - that is until they do, but not until the Dems are in control. And it most especially doesn't matter when certain types are on the receiving end of taxpayer largesse - the 1%, the multinationals, billionaire types, et. al.
But when the Dems are in the WH, then it's the key yelling point for the GOP and the Tea-Party types frothing at the mouth with manufactured outrage . . .
1
There's a reason why Trump doesn't want us to see his tax returns.
Traditionally, American conservatives have professed three underlying principles that actually make sense:
*Fiscal responsibility
*No unnecessary foreign entanglements
*Strict adherence to the Constitution
So, what happened? Nothing could be more irresponsible than the GOP tax bill. Bush, Cheney and the Neocons literally blew up the precept of no foreign entanglements, and Trump only views the Constitution as a "phony" document preventing him from turning this country into a third world plutocracy.
2
Seems pretty clear at this point: conservatives only care about fiscal responsibility when they are out of power.
The caption under the writer's name states
"Mr. Klein is the author of “Fear Your Future: How the Deck Is Stacked Against Millennials And Why Socialism Would Make It Worse.”
What socialism is he talking about? It seems we are to be treated like children to a bedtime story about an imaginary boogie man called socialism who eats small children if they don't behave and vote for a government owned lock, stock and barrel by corporate special interests.
In any case, tks for pointing out the profligacy of republican rule. Their greed knows no bounds and they will have us in the same hole they dug for us in 2008 if we don't vote the spoiled brats out of office at the first opportunity.
I think what you are seeing is what the republican party is really all about, that is the constriction of social spending you know to the undeserving poor. they are just fine with tax breaks for the deserving wealthy...they create jobs after all....remember the trickle down theory, where they get cake and everyone else gets crumbs.
Every year the Trump tax cuts stay in place is another year where the rich legally loot the U.S Treasury. This money will never be recovered, it will never be invested for the benefit of the United States. Most of it will just rot. The loot will be piled high in offshore caves filled up to be zealously guarded like the dragons lair in the Hobbit movies.
We've reached peak Boomer, hence we've reached peak debt and peak doing nothing but throwing disingenuous, neoliberal word salads at it.
The deficit is nothing other than the result of being governed by narcissistic individuals who aren't going to be around much longer to pick up the tab. The Boomers will go down in history as the generation that left behind crippling national debt, crumbling infrastructure, depleted natural resources, a climate in crises and children saddled with personal debt, mounting tax obligations and skyrocketing living costs, all to fuel their antisocial, hedonistic consumption.
1
Republicans will not criticize trump no matter how criminal or vulgar he acts and his actions.
Republicans are desperate to be reelected and they will sell their ethics, morals or integrity to keep their government paychecks.
the Republican voters will do anything to keep trump in office - like their government representatives / senators, they will not speak against trump no matter what - the base of hate stands united.
One problem is that no one knows when the dam will burst. Is it at at public debt level of 150% of GDP? Of 200%? Japan's public debt is nearly 250% of GDP, and the yen is not the world's reserve currency.
Republicans and the self-interested wealthy are driving the USA over a cliff, fiscally and otherwise. The combination of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations ("No to big government! Freedom!"), de-regulation (" No to big government! Freedom!") and the broad propaganda war against issues like climate change (" No to big government! Freedom!") point to a cynical manipulation of the populace in the name of short-term profits for the well-connected, and nobody else. What is the country going to look like in a few years? "Who cares" seems to be the attitude,. Anyways, those banks are too big to fail.
Don't worry, Mr. Klein. As soon as a Democrat is back in the White House and tries to use government to help someone who isn't already a multi-millionaire, the Deficit Hawks will swoop in to stop that.
Just as soon as the Democrats regain power the 'conservatives' will be howling 24/7 about deficits and the national debt. You count on that as sure as the sun will rise in the east and set in the west.
In my more sanguine moments, I think the Republicans are just hypocrites, screaming about debt when Democrats are in office, and biting their tongues when the Republicans are.
I'm more often more convinced, though, that theirs is hypocrisy toward a nefarious end. FTA, "...but the reality is that if the long-term debt is not put on a manageable trajectory through reasonable reforms, it will require enormous, crushing tax increases just to sustain existing government programs." The Republicans don't want to "sustain existing government services": they run up the debt, meaning a greater portion of our tax payments go to servicing it, leaving less ("It can't be helped," they whine) for services.
No. Raise taxes. Reduce the debt. Fund schools. Fund mental-health care. Fund infrastructure improvements. Fund clean-energy research. Make America great.
When Democrats are in power, Republicans are all show with their debt ceiling backseat driver antics, but when they're at the wheel they press that spending pedal to the floor.
This is the most disingenuous piece I have read in years. The author knows quite well that fiscal conservatives only used fiscal responsibility to deny others what they wanted for themselves: money. More weapons was never a problem for them. Cutting taxes for the rich was never a problem for them. All they cared about was cutting social programs that gave others access to the American Dream. To call for more frugality while the younger generations are drowning in debt is just an attempt to hide the real incentive: blatant, uncontrolled greed.
I’m convinced the sort of nail in the coffin overspending Conservatives allowed on their watch with Trump were a multi-pronged deal with the devil:
1) They’re all old and rich, and they recognize they’re about dead. So they took the tax break dollar bribe for their support while they could.
2) They understood the deficits would be kick the can down the road politics. The Dems would likely succeed Trump, and they would be the ones to have to raise taxes.
3) They care more about the long game of the judiciary. Where I suspect they miscalculated is that-if Trump is ultimately convicted in the Senate because there is no legal wiggle room-some of his judicial appointments may in turn be subject to impeachment. Kavanaugh is a possibility, as are some other Federal judges whose rulings have been so outrageous and contrary to precedent that they’re open to malpractice.
Is all this farfetched? Right now, yes. Is it possible? Sure. People are pretty angry. And there are processes for undoing bad judicial actors.
The only thing that matters to conservatives and republicans is to e seat of power. Nothing nothing more: republicans and conservatives don’t have any moral compass. Stop holding your breath for that.
It seems that the Republican platform has devolved to 3 planks:
1-No, or as little as possible, taxation of wealth and the wealthy.
2-No abortions.
3-No more brown people.
Donald Trump is with them on all 3 counts. He is sufficiently uninterested in any other issue to roll with whatever happens. He is really the only one NOW who a) will fight dirty, tooth and nail for the above, and b) has the power of the presidency. Mike Pence is no Donald Trump. There are certainly wannabes, but they cannot replace Trump in 2020. Trump is the lifeboat that the Republican party must cling to at any cost.
This is nothing more than Kansas when the Republicans did all of their magic that nearly bankrupt the state. Nice going, Trump. Did you know that he's written 12 books, with some very nice words in them.
1
Trump's is a false economy. The GOP has fueled growth with more debt. They are inextricably linked and should always be talked about together.
This idea of lying about everything to increase your political power is certainly popular. Lying is used because citizens are too lazy, or uncaring to ascertain facts. By facts I mean how does this affect me or how does this change society? Citizens have some wonderful tools to find information. Let's keep those channels balanced and fair.
Debt & deficits are only a 'problem' for Republicans when a Democrat is in the White House.
GOP is silent because they're the one (Most richest reps ever including Fake POTUS in the history of USA) benefiting most.
They will complain when they see the taxes on them go up.
We know, we know. Thing is WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT? And yes, the question is shouted. Only Health, Defense or Social Security stand to be cut—no other program is sizable enough to have any affect. Mention cutting the big-3 and get the big-shove—out the door.
@Stanley Jones
Elect Democrats.
"Fiscal conservatism" has long been, for most adherents and proponents, about something more primitive than economics. It's about who gets what in society, how society is organized, how wealth is shared, and the kind of society we have. The hypocrisy of fiscal conservatives has always been evident, judging by actions, not words ('starving the beast,' which seems to have been replaced by increasingly bald embrace of plutocracy, at the expensive of democracy, which may not survive the present regime). Trump is a canard in many ways, especially for anyone who would ascribe any sort of rational thought to what he does. Trump is a malignant narcissistic sociopath (and yes I am qualified to diagnose him) and everything he does is an action to enact his grandiose power over others and create suffering in them. He is driven by and preys upon primitive emotion and motivation. That is all that motivates him and you would be confused to think otherwise. If you want an explanation for why he makes no sense, there it is for you.
« A combination of tax breaks and increased military spending « has pushed the deficit to unprecedented levels.
Well we sure can’t afford to reduce inequalities now. So let’s get rid of these pesky programmes. And while we’re at it, let’s gut education too.
"Mr. Obama's run of deficits...helped fuel the Tea Party." What drivel! The Tea Party was never a grassroots spontaneous movement against Obama. It was entirely created and paid for by the Koch brothers and their rich friends, because they saw their central dynamic -- gutting government, i.e., reduce regulations which restricted their fossil fuel autocracy -- under threat.
The only point Klein is really making here is subtextural, even subconscious: he is flailing desperately, like all conservative pundits, because his religious/political dogma has disappeared into the sinkhole of hypocrisy. He has nothing to believe in anymore.
I wouldn't find it a problem to jail Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and the rest of the Republicans for stealing from my social security.
1
GOP only wants money to flow to corporations and the really well off. They are willing to gash programs for the average, or below average Jane or Joe. Ryan, Mitch and Trump lied about the tax plan. Ryan never once submitted a balanced budget. The GOP is a fraud and only exists to feather the nests of the already wealthy.
If you still believe the GOP is truly against deficits and debt, and not just using it as a cudgel against social programs they hate and Democrats in power, you are... not paying attention, to put it kindly.
Nah, it was never about fiscal probity. It was always a cover for their deep racism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, and every other loathsome trait of the native American white. "Being fiscally conservative," was their schtick to try to get elected and maintain power. It's all out in the open now.
1
"Conservatives" care about deficits? Reagan? W. Bush? Trump? They've been all about grievance and white nationalism since Nixon. Look at the numbers!
Lets not forget that the Trump tax cuts are a ticking time bomb and are guaranteed to expire after Trump’s term, and most likely during what will be a Democratic administration and then republicans will accuse democrats of raising taxes if they refuse to extend the unpaid for breaks. They did the exact same thing under Bush & Obama. How are their voters so blind? Willful ignorance is the only possibility.
trickle down has always been trickle on. nothing to see here people, keep moving.
Republicans never cared about the deficit.
All they cared about was cutting programs that helped minorities and women. (The white men those programs help are just acceptable losses.)
That is what interviews with actual Republicans show.
They will cut of their ears for misogyny and racism. Deficits weren't a reason they were an excuse.
It is time to call it out for what it was- a lie to cover for less savory bigotries.
The GOP conservatives’ only philosophy is festering plutocracy at home and abroad. Their unwavering support for Trump is due to their huge tax cut and appointment of conservative judges who will enforce their plutocracy despite their administration's bigotry, misogyny, nepotism, crony capitalism, fraud, conspiracy, and collusion, money laundering for the Russian mob/government, etc.
They spend billions on political operatives and think tanks, with fakes studies and use Murdoch’s faux and the Sinclair network to preach their nonsense. The most successful of them are hucksters, clowns and conmen/women, who can get voters to vote against their own interests with trickle-down economics of tax cuts, corporate welfare for their friends, reduce worker rights/income, privatize social services like education, healthcare, etc.
They shepherded their voters using Orwellian tactics equating anything that helps 99% of us as socialist, communist, liberal, undemocratic, taking away our freedom, etc. The GOP is the most successful political con artists in the globe.
A political party who preys on our country’s deplorables with racism, misogyny, homophobia, religious zealotry, etc. will not be stopped with one election. Elizabeth Warren preaching that the system is rigged has the courage and sound anti-GOP policies will begin to cure us from this cancer. With her defeat of this cancerous GOP, perhaps they can once again become the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt
Republicans do not care either for economy or the masses who voted for Republicans and Trump. All they care is about their own pockets. One trillion dollar deficit just in 2019 will make even a fifth grader ashamed of Republican economic sense.
That’s the best headline I’ve seen in three years.
1
We've all figured out that Republicans only think something is wrong when Democrats do it. Republicans think they have a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. In fact, one famous Republican said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and nobody would care.
Today’s so-called conservatives need to look at the mirror and ask what they stand for. It is not conservatism, rather a self destructing cult just vying for power. They support a morally bankrupt nasty emperor who has no clothes. The narcissist stands for nada- everything he does id to continue his corrupt activities. Yes, we have not seen any creature like this. As a master con man, he paints his egregious acts by portraying himself as a straight shooter. Alas, they don’t see underneath the painting. I urge the conservatives to open the dictionary and learn what is the true meaning of the word.
Grover norquist hasn’t chimed in yet
Every single Trump voter that I know, including all those in my own family -
"In July, when a caller to Rush Limbaugh expressed concern about the return of $1 trillion deficits under Mr. Trump, the radio host, who has always had his hand on the pulse of his audience, responded: 'Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around.'”
Trump gives them permission to hate. Just some good old fashioned hate. Hate for the gays, hate for the blacks, hate for the Mexicans, hate for the immigrants and, most importantly, pure raging hatred in their hearts for the first African American President of the United States.
The only good thing to come from these Hellish years of Trump is that he has shown us who they really are. Turns out, "deplorable" was a pretty accurate word choice.
Here's a link for Mr. Klein to read that he may have missed, even though it appears in this newspaper: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/opinion/us-budget-deficit.html
Republicans are essentially social Darwinists. Reward the rich with tax breaks, because they deserve it, and punish the poor with service cuts, because they deserve it too. The deficit is just a tool used to justify these deplorable policies.
Democrats want to spend money on things that end up saving money in the long run, such as single-payer healthcare and education. That is an investment. You get dividends.
Republicans want to give money to a few families that are already obscenely wealthy.
Not all deficits are the same, and only a fool would pretend that investment and theft are the same thing.
History will likely mark the Tea Party as loud complainers who were incapable of governing and blind to their hypocrisy.
Ignorance of the masses. Trump supporters dont want to read about the deficit. It means nothing to them. They dont want to read about the Wall Street boom because they have nothing invested in the stock market. They dont realize that Trump's world is the corporate world. It doesnt include $7.75 an hour peons. These people look at Democrats and think those people live better than I do and they look down on us poor folks. Sad that they have it exactly backwards!!
When kanye west is getting a $60 million refund, something is very wrong...thanks donald.
Conservatism never has been about fiscal responsibility, it's about maintaining a strong heirachal society where those poors know their place. It's about relieving the burden that government places on the upper class on behlaf of those poors.
From Burke to Trump it has always been this project long term. People need to know their place, there are winners and losers and the predator does not pity the prey.
It's time for the conservative movement to pack up and go home. Trump, their guru, has no more desire to pay attention to the deficit than the man in the moon. Why this nitwit crowd should still be called "conservative" is beyond me.
Have always thought Republicans were pretty much bereft of innovative ideas and certainly NOT particularly generous towards their fellow human beings.
But, I must say their old school insistence on not spending more than you have was something I could not easily argue with. It made common sense.
Now, they don't even have that. All they have is an ignorant buffoon in the White House who will go down as the worst president in our history by a very wide margin.
Modern "conservatism" is being crushed under the devastating weight of shameless hypocrisy.
Budget
Family Values
Small government
Rule of Law
Original Construction
States rights
Tear Down This Wall
Big, Beautiful Healthcare Plan
Pu-lease.
Such deceit and treachery by republicans who lie as much as trump does. Many who vote for the republicans must have some sort of dementia to not remember all the dirt they do when if office. The debt and deficits are gifts from the conservative hypocrites. Remember how they desperately tried to kill health care for millions but gave huge tax cuts to corporations and the extremely wealthy. Remember their deeds at voting time.
1
When the people looting the nation's treasury are your fellow plutocrats, the last thing you're going to do is set off the burglar alarm.
Just say it: Republicans are hypocrites.
This is a class warfare. Republicans are waging a way against the middle class and the poor. All they care about is lining their pockets and those of the oligarchs and the corporations including the fossil fuel industry. They don't care about the future. They don't care about the environment. They don't care about democracy.
1
The "debts" are war debts from the 2001 synthetic terror program--$8Tn and counting. Fully backed by both parties over three election cycles. The only fiscal responsibility I would lay on Trump stems from his advisor circle of Miller, Kushner and especially the US Treasury Secretary, Mnuchin whose lowest priority is US financial integrity, and whose highest fealty is to Israel. Article III?
hy·poc·ri·sy
/həˈpäkrəsē/
noun
the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.
The failed, morally repugnant cult of conservatism should and must perish for humanity to survive. We are watching it self-destruct in the person of Trump, and people will pay a lot less attention to conservative liars like Philip Klein when all this is over. But the cost may be too great.
1
Isn’t it obvious by now? When convenient, the outrage is thick with these folks. Now that their man Trump is riding point, not a peep, not a whimper.
I’m so disgusted by it all.
What a disgrace, from any angle.
Why is that, I wonder? Hm-m. Let me think. They certainly foam-at-the-mouth over most everything else, or is that just when Democrats are involved? They are nothing but two-faced 'moral' hypocrites that put party over country no matter how faulty their ideology is. Is it any wonder I left the Republican Party in 2000 after 30 years. And it's been downhill ever since to a party now mired in lies, hate, contempt, moral hypocrisy, greed, and blatant corruption while promoting violence and lawlessness. What a way to serve America.
“Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”
— Dick Cheney
There fiscal plan in play seems to be: Grab the money and run. Leave democrats with the tab. We saw this when W. burnt through a fiscal surplusc on tax cuts and a two front war. That wasn't brazen enough, so we have now a prez who is constantly find new ways to break the Emoluments clause.
An excellent discussion of the deficit and Social Security was given in a Times article
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/the-real-long-term-budget-challenge/?ref=business
by Bruce Bartlett who held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul
An excerpt
“To be sure, some restraint is needed in federal entitlement programs. But the idea that we are facing a crisis is complete nonsense. Spending for Social Security, in particular, is very stable. Relatively modest changes, such as raising the taxable earnings base slightly, would be sufficient to put the program on a sound footing virtually forever.
As a Nov. 28 Congressional Research Service report explains, historically 90 percent of covered earnings was subject to the Social Security tax. In recent years, this percentage has fallen to 84 percent, as the bulk of wage gains has gone to those making more than the maximum taxable income, currently $110,100. Raising the share of covered earnings back to 90 percent would be sufficient to eliminate almost half of Social Security’s long-run actuarial deficit, according to the Social Security actuaries."
***************
My comment.
It comes down to choices. Do we want to preserve Social Security or do we want to steal Social Security money to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
I suggest Philip Klein make a lunch date with Paul Krugman and become educated about the nature of our national debt.
Obama saved Detroit and steered us from the brink of financial collapse with a stimulus that rightfully should have been multiples bigger. They hung him in effigy.
Trump posts trillion deficits with nothing to show for it except 67 miles of replacement fence on the southern border and 3000 children separated from their parents. Crickets.
This is proof that the Tea Party movement was never... ever about the deficit or fiscal responsibility or taxes or anything but a pure, unadulterated meltdown by older whites when a black man was elected POTUS.
1
“Conservatism”! Think the time has come to plainly define what it really means in the GOP world - nationalism, fascism with a heavy dose of racism. This was always what it meant, at least now we don’t have to pretend.
1. We are correctly worried about increased deficits.
2. Tax revenues are up 25% under Trump as compared to Obama.
3. Of course spending is also up - even more.
4. How will we pay for the new many new “free” programs touted by Democratic candidates which would cost an additional $5T-$7T per year.
The Democratic Presidential Candidate should use the deficit to win the independent, moderate, fiscal conservative voters. If the USA cannot pay down the debt during the best of economic times, when will the debt be addressed? Are these really good economic numbers, adding a trillion a year to future generations, just to give the wealthiest $1.6 trillion in tax cuts?
A progressive tax rate above 50%, coupled with the end of the capital gains tax, would achieve the fundamental equality both Sanders and Warren seek. When Eisenhower was President, the economic numbers were this good with a 90% income tax rate. Another additional gain from such a tax structure would be venture capital start up money. An investment in teapot refineries for light sweet crude or solar or geothermal or wind... could result in an attractive investment since if the venture fails, the government loses more in taxes than the risk taking investor. If risk taker wins, his gains would still be substantial, after tax. This subject matter is not that difficult to explain to the moderates who recognize supply side economics is a failed theory, always resulting in large deficits. Therefore, repeating it is Zombie Economics.
Furthermore, the Republican Pledge of no new taxes was developed by Gordon Norquist, whom, at age 13, learning civics for the first time, came up with the idea that if you never raise taxes, you would never lose an election.
A President acting 13, economic plan by a 13 year old.
Tax revenue per year under Trump is 25% higher than that per year under Obama.
Congress continues to allow spending to increase at an even higher rate.
For over 60 years, Congress has failed to tax for all the legislation that it passed that needed funding, thus borrowing for more and more of it. It started with the build up of the cold war, the Vietnam War, the entitlement programs, the over 70,000 pages of the IRS Tax Code, tax cuts by most Presidents except Clinton, the almost 20 years in the middle east. One of the main reasons for this, was that taxing for all of the above, would of made the average taxpayer at the time pay attention, think about what war, how long, is it worth it, how generous entitlements should be. Not taxing for government ends up with poor domestic policy, and often dangerous foreign policy in the hands of ideologues, and or those making money off of their misguided ideology. In 2000, the debt was $6.7 trillion and now it is $21.9 trillion. The interest on that debt going forward will be $400 billion next year. The government has promised $30 trillion of entitlement spending over the next 15 years that it has no way of paying for. The healthcare program that covers the most people is Medicaid, with 75 million on it, with no premium for any of them. It is set to run out of money to pay all the bills in less than 3 years. This has been known for over a decade. The program is a federal-state government partnership, where those states that add those in their states to the program are experiencing fiscal difficulties, and must tax for it each year. The reality of the debt will be here in 2020.
1
Senator Toomey's campaign was financed by the Koch brothers. He was one of the main players in steering tax cuts to his donors as payback.
This is a GOP Senator who would not vote a for dime towards infrastructure spending nor anything at all that doesn't benefit his billionaire cronies.
2
Candidates for 2020 when asked how are they going to pay for their social programs should answer it will be easy I will issue more treasuries.
1
Conservative economics should die at least as construed by the past several deficit busting Republican administrations. The thing about economics (it doesn't take an economist to understand this) is that the public policy depends on the business cycle.
When times are good and the the economy is humming along, that is when we should be saving for a rainy day and pay down debt. Then, when the economy inevitably slows down, you spend (invest), maybe even to into deficits.
Conservatism thinks there is only one prescription for the economy at all times. Cut taxes, but only for the rich, and don't worry about spending because the reduced taxes will encourage private investment. It doesn't work, yet they try it time and time again.
I really hope that one day, economics will not be political and instead rely on science and pragmatism.
The deficit didn't explode because of the costs of Medicare and Social Security, or any social programs, Mr Klein. It exploded because of a completely irresponsible $1.5 trillion tax cut for the benefit of the very wealthiest.
4
A much more effective critique than yesterday’s from Krugman, who started with the rift idea but then labored to make it about tax cuts rather than spending. Democrats say they like spending and they spend. Republicans say they don’t like spending, but they spend too. One who dislikes both excessive spending and hypocrisy is left with no good choice.
Milton Friedman had it right when he explained (but shouldn’t have had to) that spending is what matters - spending is taxing. We pay for it now or pay for it later.
Deficits are the natural result of Conservative economics, not Trump. Trickle down only made the rich richer. Tax cuts never paid for themselves. Socializing costs and privatizing profits does not work. Incentivizing the rich by giving them tax money while incentivizing the poor by taking everything away and jailing them does not seem to work, either. Cutting education and food and medicine for the poor does not work. Using tax money to make the rich wealthier instead of investing it in infrastructure does not look like a promising use of capital. Where are all these private/ public partnerships that are supposed to fix our infrastructure. The GOP had 2 years with control of government to do this.
Specifically, what part of the conservative agenda improves the economy. Where is the data to show it?
2
"In contrast, the current debt outlook is not from a one-off event, such as a major war or economic downturn, but from the combination of rising health care costs and an increase in the retirement-age population that is driving up spending on Medicare and Social Security". It seems to me that we have know for quite awhile that the baby boomers were aging. We have also known that medical care for all was a necessity. What was not needed but was pushed through by the Republicans was a 1.5 trillion dollar tax break for the wealthy. That might put a crimp in lowering the deficit. I think some of the Democratic candidates are pushing too much too fast. Every American does not need a free college education. Every American does not need forgiveness of all their college loans. Is some help needed? Unquestionably so, but not everyone and every nickel. Do we need universal health coverage? Of course, but it doesn't all need to be paid for by the government. An opt-in plan could answer that need. But put the blame where it belongs - a 1.5 trillion welfare check to the wealthy
3
How is this legal? Seems like an oversight by the founding fathers to just let governments spend recklessly in favor of future generations.
Deficits matter a lot to Republicans when a Democrat is in the White House...not so much when a Republican is in the White House. It would be really nice to have a party that placed country above self interest, but maybe that's not an achievable goal for the human race...
10
"The reality is that if the long-term debt [may] require enormous, crushing tax increases just to sustain existing government programs.
"Just to sustain"? A major purpose here is to ruin "existing government programs." Trump is using his executive power to wreck as many parts of the Executive Branch that he can, and the growing debt will soon be used as a Republican excuse to cut (or eliminate) Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. That's a feature, not a bug.
In my quote, I replaced Philip Klein''s "is not put on a manageable trajectory through reasonable reforms, it will" with "[may]". More accurate would be "unless the Democrats get back in power."
6
@Chas Simmons No one is eliminating or cutting those programs unless they wish their heads roll down the street.
article would have benefited from stating the deficit level after the sequester which if i recall was around $500MM. so trump doubled that in good economic times. Quite a feat!
5
Government spending is not a bad thing in and of itself.
What is important is what the money is spent on.
Government borrowing money for tax cuts for the rich: bad.
Government borrowing money to wage wars for corporate profit: bad
These two have been the greatest factor in our ballooning debt.
However:
Government investing tax money on citizenry (healthcare, education, police): good.
Government spending tax money on national parks, infrastucture: good.
Government spending money on defence (not on wars for corporate profit): good.
4
The national debt can also be expressed as confidence in each other to live up to the obligations we have imposed upon our future generations. Since money is no longer backed by gold or tangible values it is paper exchanged between people who have confidence in the government that prints the paper.
So it is the threat of loss of respect for our institutions and our declining mutual respect for each other that will lead to the destruction of the dollar. There is no other mysterious force proping up those numbers on paper. computers or plast[c cards. "Sound as a dollar" might better be phrased "sound as an American."
2
Except when the Chinese call on their loan.
1
Ah, the first shot over the bow by a "responsible" conservative and Republican, clearly anticipating major electoral losses in 2020 and trying to prevent a Democratic agenda of social spending with fear of the bogeyman---debt. Yes, its just fine for GOP administrations to cut taxes on the upper financial strata, increase military spending, cut corporate taxes, allow tax shelters, tax wages at greater rates than investment returns and run up deficits all with the same pathetic and dishonest mantra that growth will somehow fix it all and then suddenly find fiscal religion when they are out of power and attempt to decimate spending on the bottom 90%. Please, we have seen this movie before. With an entire generation of young people strangled by debt and declining opportunity Democrats should simply ignore this type of disingenuous concern from the GOP. Any need for revenue to fund national health care, college, pre-K, housing, etc can be found from a wealth tax and higher tax rates on the top 10% as needed, military cuts or by using the time tested conservative approach, just lie and wait for the other party to clean up the mess..
4
It really strikes me as plain and simple plan: Republicans now want to drive the debt up so they can then say, Hey, look everyone, we're so broke we can't afford these social programs any longer.
Voila! They get what they want, which is each man out for himself.
7
"In the coming decades, debt is projected to blow past the World War II record and reach 144 percent of gross domestic product by 2049."
Just in time when its predicted to start feeling the major effects of climate change.
1
Let's not let facts get in the way here, right? According to the Federal Reserve Bank, under Barack Obama, debt as a percentage of GDP rose from 73.4% of GDP to 105.2% of GDP. Under Trump it has declined from 105.2% to 103.2%, as the Trump's red-hot economy has expanded GDP faster than federal debt has risen. Annual federal debt is 4.5% of GDP today, and was 10% under Obama.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S
Of course, a slight improvement in the debt picture is hardly what institutional conservatives in the GOP wanted. They wanted to completely shutter the federal government, and one of the reasons there are so many "never Trumpers" skulking around in the GOP is because he didn't fall for it.
And on the other hand, all the left-wing "experts" like Paul Krugman were arguing in 2010 that Obama should have piled on MORE debt than he did. Now that sort of thing is apparently to be forgotten by the "experts."
@Chuck French
So it's all good and we will be able to afford public spending on a Medicare for All program, free college tuition for those who qualify academically, student loan debt forgiveness and the rest.
Thanks for the info!
2
There shouldn’t be ANY annual debt when the economy is at full employment with decent growth, like during Bill Clinton’s boom, Stimulus spending, especially on infrastructure, during high unemployment like we had in 2010 makes sense and is based on sound Keynesian economic principles. Trillion dollar deficits and rock bottom interest rates in a ‘strong’ economy is a recipe for utter ruin during the next slowdown in the business cycle.
3
@Chuck French You left out the financial crash provided by Bush where tax revenues tumbled. You must acknowledge that Obama took extraordinary steps in face of the Great Recession when we had quarterly declines in GDP in excess of 7% and job losses in excess of 800k per month before Obama got into office.
Trump faced none of this.
It's just amazing that billionaires can't afford the necessities of life without one more tax cut.
6
@Martin
The billionaires money isn’t yours—make your own.
Deficits only matter if Dems are in power, and the money will go for people. If Repubs are in power, any corporate subsidy or tax cut is OK, and we don't know what the word Deficits means. Likewise, military spending is exempt. Wait for Dems to be in power, for the Repubs to climb the ladder and suddenly discover fiscal responsibility.
5
"Dismissing fiscal conservatism as a bogus issue is a serious mistake that poses an existential threat to a movement that was built around limiting the burden that government places on individuals."
That premise is false. It's not built around limiting government's burden, it's built around bigotry and nihilism with limited government burden as a pretense. As an (anti-)"conservative", Klein knows this. As Americans, we also know this thanks to loose-lipped "conservatives" like Atwater and heroes like Stephanie Hofeller.
It's not (just) the loser that's their problem, nor that they are overspending. It's their policies and very nature. People like Biden have said not to question motives, and in a way they're right: that the GOP's motives are vile is beyond question.
3
We all will have to do with less, that is all entitlements including all public pensions will have to be cut. That is the answer to this issue.
It would be nice if the Time ran a column about the deficit by someone who actually knows what he or she is talking about. Mr. Klein writes: "The current debt outlook is not from a one-off event, such as a major war or economic downturn, but from the combination of rising health care costs and an increase in the retirement-age population that is driving up spending on Medicare and Social Security (the C.B.O. includes future unfunded obligations for the latter in its projections)." No Mr. Klein, the deficit is not at its high level because of spending on entitlements, but rather because of the Trump & GOP tax cuts that have benefited only the oligarchic billionaire class. Republicans -- not Democrats -- have been the epitome of fiscal irresponsibility, starting with Reagan, whose first budget doubled the deficit of Jimmy Carter's final year and then tripled the Carter deficit in the second year (yes, look it up). George W. Bush's tax cuts exacerbated the deficit even further and of course, now we have Trump's deficit. By contrast, Bill Clinton's final two years produced a budget surplus (were you not around then?) and Obama's budgets had decreasing deficits for his last four years. Yes, later in your column you acknowledge the growth in military spending (i.e., corporate welfare) and the tax cuts as major contributors to the present deficit problem, but don't blame entitlement spending that benefits the poorest half of Americans for our mounting deficit.
9
This abdication of any financial or moral responsibility is because the Republicans under Trump are no longer actually Republicans. Like their heroes, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Hannity, and now Trump's with his absolute degradation of the Presidency, they have become shock jocks, playing on older white people's fears and prejudices to maximum effect and for maximum ratings. They could care less about the deficit, or the nation in general as long as they get attention, no matter the cost to our Country.
4
The entire party and conservative movement is collapsing in all facets. All see the economic, social and policy hypocrisy. They have not been operating in good faith at their very core. Hopefully trump will be the end of that.
2
This is what conservatives do. They run up debt and declare the end is near if we don't cut the programs that actually make people's lives better (Social Security, Medicare/aid, food stamps, etc). This has been their line my entire adult life.
There's nothing new in their current behavior. They don't know the meaning of fiscally responsible leadership.
7
The tax cut for the rich was first, and that created a big deficit. Now the Republicans will fight to reduce the deficit--not by raising the taxes on the rich, but by pushing cuts to "liberal" programs. This is not new (see deficit/unemployment mess Bush left Obama in addition to the bank crisis.) The Republicans know that if there is a deficit problem now, this will help them campaign against the future Democratic candidate's programs. The only answer is the ballot box, and that is no sure thing given the electoral college and voting suppression. The article's point about Republicans being seen as not being Republicans as far as the deficit is concerned, is not a real problem for them. They'll blame it on the "welfare" state as usual, and get away with it.
5
As a physician I frequently have Republicans complain about the cost and even wheedle out of paying when I show sympathy. Then, when I explain my support for universal health care, they complain that their taxes would go to help 'those lazy bums", presumably Democrats.
7
@Dan Woodard MD ,
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh
But when the taxman comes to the door
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes
1
Maybe, as Paul Krugman (an actual economist) argues elsewhere on these pages, fiscal responsibility is overrated. Maybe we can run deficits, even rather large ones, indefinitely. Maybe Modern Monetary Theory is right and the government can, at least to some degree, simply print money and spend without either taxing or borrowing to fund that spending.
As long as people continue to value our currency (i.e., inflation stays modest), we can continue to accumulate debt and maybe even print money to fund spending without raising taxes. I assume there is some point where people will lose faith in our currency, but as long as inflation and interest rates are low and the economy is growing, we are not at the point where we need to be overly concerned. In fact, raising taxes or cutting spending could both do more harm to the economy than good.
2
American deficits will matter when China has the world’s biggest economy and decides to teach us a lesson! That is probably not too far away given all the trendlines.
The author is clearly laying the ground work for the next Democratic administration. As regular as clockwork, as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Republicans will complain about the debt during Democratic administrations and spend like a tweaker with someone else's credit card during Republican administrations.
But there is a key distinction that the author does not seem to understand. Just like a business or a family, if government goes into debt by investing in something of value, then we benefit from the investment in the long term. For example, if we invest in infrastructure that grows business, our economy is stronger. If we invest in education, our economy (and our society) is stronger. If we invest in universal basic health care, our society (and our economy) is stronger. If we invest in missiles,... well, not so much.
If we have a tax policy that shuttles money to the stagnant bank accounts of the richest of the rich, we will not only have to pay for the debt we are incurring now, but we will need to pay for the deferred maintenance for the working poor and our dilapidated infrastructure and social safety net.
Philip Klein is welcome to look at real world examples of these phenomena - they are everywhere. Or he can continue to miss the point. He laments "big government" as if the spending of the Obama administration is equivalent to the spending of the Trump administration. This too is as regular as clockwork.
9
You have to remember, that the Republican "Tax Breaks For The Rich" scheme was a two-parter.
The first part was of course, the "Tax Breaks For The Rich" - where all of the wealthy Republican Donors would make millions in Tax Breaks.
The second part of the plan which they have not been able to implement yet, is gigantic cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
That was the strategy that Paul Ryan had outlined, right after the Tax Break Law was passed in the dark of night.
5
The neo-cons are just that -- cons, cutting taxes to the wealthy, then crying poor, clutching their pearls about the debt, in order to cut spending on programs for the rest of us. Two sides to that ledger -- if they're really concerned about the debt they could also raise taxes... We're living the results today of the long con, with rising inequality, the decay of our infrastructure, education, social programs and so on, while the plutocrats have captured not just much of the economic system but our political system as well.
5
2040 to 2050 is shaping up to be a VERY bad time in the history of the United States. You're talking about a world-wide economic contraction (due to falling birthrate catching up with us as the baby boomers start dying off en-mass), while oil prices skyrocket (and supply possibly runs out), global warming repercussions devastate the world, global water shortages become critical and world-wide water rationing hits, mass-starvation, AND massive debt coming due when there are 30 sick/dying old people for every working person in the modern world.
At that point (when GNP is falling every year and debt is increasing every year [for a decade at least]) you're going to have some VERY angry working-class people who have to deal with the burden of it all while their tax rate hits 80%.
2
Tax revenues are way way up - because of the hugely increased number of people working - which is because of 1) the corporate tax cuts and 2) the massive decrease in unnecessary bureaucratic regulations and 3) the confidence President Trump brought to our economy.
@Dr. John
Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP is at historic lows. Hence the deficit.
10
@Dr. John
Tax receipts are down and spending is up. This deficit is direct result of a $1.5 trillion tax cut with no reductions in spending.
They’re called facts and, sooner or later even Republicans have to deal with them.
8
@Dr. John In actual fact, whilst nominal Federal tax revenue went up, in real terms it FELL by 1.5% between 2017 and 2018 (the last years for which actual figures are available). So, your claim is correct, assuming that the Government doesn't have to pay more for all the things that got more expensive over the last year...you know, like everyone else has had to!
2
"The C.B.O. warns that this unprecedented level of debt, left unchecked, greatly increases the risk of a fiscal crisis,"
It sounds like a broken record coming from conservatives. They have been making the same prediction since Obama was sworn in, and its yet to materialize. Ever. There has never been a fiscal crisis in this country due to debt and there wont be despite what "very serious" people say. Facts are that Inflation has been persistently below The Fed's 2 % target even as unemployment is near historic lows. That should in and of itself tell you that something these guys have been selling isnt right
1
The Conservatives who are always railing against "Big Government" should be lobbying hard to reduce military spending by at least 50 percent. You want the largest, most powerful military in the world? Fine. But you can't whine about big government.
9
I think the ballooning of the deficit is a calculated means to an end that has long been the holy grail for wealthy conservatives: the shredding of the social safety net. And before anybody protests that nobody would seriously cut Medicare and Social Security (the first to be shredded would be Medicaid, because the poor are always the first to be attacked), let's remember just how many other outrageous actions this president has taken that have left so many shaking their heads in disbelief. I think the dangerous deficit is Mitch McConnell's design.
7
I'm tired of reading how Social Security is contributing to the rising federal deficit. Social Security is a separately taxed, supported by a payroll system on employees and employers.
From what I've read this deficit could be corrected by raising the taxed salary base and some manipulation of retirement age. The government has created the debt to the general fund by "BORROWING" from the Social Security trust fund and replacing the money with special treasury bonds (which are a debt obligation of the federal government). It's time to set the record strait both clearly and honestly.
14
Absolutely. Each and every paycheck includes a deduction for Social Security and Medicare, with a matching equal payment provided to the government by our employers. These are NOT entitlement programs. What are entitlement programs however are the tax cuts to the wealthy subsidized by increases to the middle class, tax deductions to large corporations who then receive refunds. It’s a simple google check to find out which corporations are on the list. Additionally, a balanced budget has been more of a concern to Democrats than Republicans, i.e., Reagan Bush and now Trump, verses Clinton and Obama.
7
@Brylar
They are entitlements as you take out more than you pay in, therefore I believe we should all get back only the amount we and our employers contribute.
After that, you are in your own.
I mean, you're not using that payroll deduction to buy your own social security; you're paying for some retiree who put in much, much less, so that in the future when you retire some working stiff will reduce his take-home pay to insure your longevity outside the labor force. Of course it's an entitlement. It's no different than paying taxes to build roads you won't drive on, fund public schools neither you nor anyone in your household is currently attending (or maybe ever did or will ever attend), and all the rest. who cares? it's something we need, like roads and schools. when did "entitlement" become a curse word? what will we swear off next, unalienable rights?
1
"With leading Democratic presidential candidates proposing tens of trillions of dollars of new federal spending, Republicans’ abdication of fiscal conservatism leaves Americans with no responsible party."
Don't worry, Mr. Klein, as soon as we have a Democratic president the whole Republican party will turn fiscal conservative.
14
Unless I missed something, Mr. Klein fails to mention the enormous gift that Trump's tax policies have given to the richest individuals and corporations.
After the Second World War, the wealthiest Americans paid high taxes, and the deficit was reduced. Duh. We might try that again. Or does Mr. Klein mean that only the government should stop spending money? Is he suggesting that the sick, undereducated, unhoused, addicted, and otherwise underprivileged people, the "we the people" should stop spending, should stop needing?
5
Perhaps we could search the world for some countries that do better fiscally. Oh, why, look at Scandinavia. High tax, 50% on basically everybody, everybody gets this all that "free stuff", but, at the end, they have a balanced budget. They often have surpluses, too.
And, oh, my, Norway, the one with the socialized oil, has a fat National Sovereign Fund of over $1 Trillion with a population of 6 million.
So, in the real world, it seems the problem with socialism is what do you do with the budget surplus.
7
The economy is on life support, income disparity is growing, interest rate cuts are coming again soon - but there will still be a downturn. Alas, the Dems will be in office when it happens but we're used to cleaning up after the GOP at this point. Sigh. Somebody has to be the adult in the room.
3
@Melanie
Since tax revenues are way way up, and in that Congress sets the budget, what cuts will they make?
2
@Dr. John Tax revenues as a percent of GDP are at historic lows.
6
@Dr. John
Tax revenues almost always go up because of the increase in population. The better measure is tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, which has gone down for decades and decades. Hence, our National Debt.
But do not worry, as soon as Trickle Down kicks in, all the tax cuts will pay for themselves. It just takes more than a handful of decades for it to work. Keep voting GOP until it does.
2
No expert here, but the article seems to conflate and confuse the national "debt" with the budget "deficit", to make his points.
Conservatives, Republican or not, aren't conservatives anymore. They want an imbalance in the budget to shrink the "deep state", and to move entitlements in reverse. They see tax cuts as a way to do that, so they compete with the "spending" liberals.
Many are adopting "creative destruction" tactics of crushing budget deficits to encourage a new and crushing recession. Only under that scenario can they hope to bring on a whole new societal structure of survival of the fittest, and small government.
On policy, liberals today are, in many ways, conservatives. They want to help save and conserve families immersed in poverty, conserve health care, balanced budgets through tax increases and the environment.
If we had a tax structure comparable to President Reagan's, the budget deficit might not exist. For 40 years, throughout the Reagan-Bush recessions and beyond, Republican "conservatives" have been feeding at the trough for their own profit through "tax expenditures".
Since when was the Republican party the party of thrift?
8
During President Obama’s eight years, tax revenue average $1.9T per year.
During President Trump’s first three years, federal tax revenue has averaged $2.4T per year.
A half a trillion $$ more in revenue per year but the deficit is increasing?
Why?
Obviously spending is out of control. And that spending is under the control of the legislative branch, not the White House.
The US Federal Budget is constitutionally the responsibility of the Congress. The legislative branch - not the President- is responsible for establishing the budget and setting the debt ceiling.
2
@Dr. John Good joke, Dr. John, good joke! You're including in those figures years in which the U.S. was being pulled out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression - by Barack Obama. The numbers have barely budged since he left office.
This is where that whole "the Federal govt is an insurance company with a military" comes in, right? Medicare, Soc Sec and the Pentagon are the only real factors in the Federal budget. Everything else adds up to, basically, the applesauce section of the supermarket.
So you cut the NEA all you want, you're not gonna make a dent unless you face that reality.
For example:
The US Air Force is the world's biggest air force.
The US Navy is the world's second biggest air force.
Just for starters, maybe there are some savings to be realized in areas like that.
2
I find this argument about "limiting the burden of taxation government places on its citizens" fascinating.
The US is one of the lowest taxed countries in the OECD, in the bottom decile as a percent of GDP which is really the correct measure of relative tax burden.
Our tax receipts as a percent of GDP are historical lows with corporate taxes at ridiculously low level. Four decades of reducing taxes has certainly not resulted in a "capitalist paradise" has it? In fact, the argument that taxes are a "burden" is a big lie to begin with.
We not only do not have a "capitalist paradise", in fact we have a nightmare where our country is literally falling apart at the seems. You name it: roads and bridges, education, pure research (keep in mind that many of our greatest innovations and discoveries came from the public sector), rural internet and so on and so on.
The fact that taxes cut two ways, don't they? For the majority of Americans, taxes are a boon, not a burden. They create a society where everyone gets to share the wealth. We get good infrastructure and the positive economic benefits that flow from it. We get a social welfare system that protects the ill, the poor, and the aged from the ravages of capitalism.
The winner in the "low tax, limited government" argument are the wealthy. And the data clearly shows this to be true.
So please, why don't get you get down off of your propaganda machine for 1980-era Republicans and look what you have done to our society!
7
@Mike
The problem with capitalism is that sooner or later the rich end up with everybody else's money.
The Bolshevik Revolution and Neoliberalism were both launched by smart people who thought each system would advantage them during each corresponding period. In the end, it hurt all people badly nurturing nationalism that ended with WWI and WWII. The scare -and big lie- right now is that Socialism will replace the currently resplendent system.
Trump is the result of several decades of Neoliberalism that transferred industries abroad and displaced the workforce, caused stagnant wages in the face of steady inflation, while “vulture capitalists’ “ looting” is still running rampant. Income inequality, the fruit of Neoliberalism, reverberates in the streets of cities across the country and world as seen last week, from Lebanon to Santiago, Chile.
The country needs a strong Democratic leader who has the strength, vision and will to help us restructure the system. We need to return, at the very least, to FDR’s capitalism with rules, as in the 1940s.
2
Trump is the king of debt. The GOP is the party of spend and cut taxes on the rich. Fear not, as soon as the White House holds a democrate again, the GOP will return to being fanatics about debt, fiscal conservatives and demanding entitlement cuts. But they will fight to the death any tax increases.... on Corporations or the top classes. Throw in for good measure a big capital gains tax cut, projecting it to no doubt, increase revenue.
3
“But when reality sets in and the bill for decades of fiscal recklessness comes due”, the so-called conservatives of today would have cashed in their chips and be long gone. If they really cared about the future of the country, they would not be fighting against our institutions and against issues like climate change.
1
There is no conservatism. All that's left is transfers of wealth to the 1%.
5
I believe it is actually the point zero zero one percent now... Whatever it is, it’s obscene and my friends in other countries do not understand why there aren’t hundreds of millions of us rioting in the streets every single day.
Unless we get serious about cutting military spending, the hope of reducing the deficit is a joke. But military spending is the new third rail: mention it, and a politician gets branded as someone who doesn't support the troops.
5
That’s not the problem. Unless I’m mistaken, it is the rigged system of strip-mining of all that’s left, from every single aspect of our lives, to the few at the top.
2
And somehow the author completely fails to mention military expenditures when explaining the deficit. It’s not an insignificant amount spent on defense, active duty benefits, and the welfare of retired personnel.
1
Which makes it critical to track "not supporting" the troops back to the military-industrial lobbyist roots of that narative.
"Supporting the troops" could be turned around to mean higher salaries, better medical care and greater retirement benefits while defunding the weapons industry's costly economic model.
Tracing that same old same old "Supporting the Troops" from your politician's mouth to the hand that feeds them is the place to start.
We need to end corporate political donations, they warp political outcomes and do not contribute to economic efficiency.
The Republicans have achieved the first step in their plan to curtail any and probably all social programs. Higher deficits will lead to the vast majority of voters agreeing to cutting spending to Medicare or Social Security rather than paying higher taxes.
It’s in the US DNA, you’re cowboys and think that it’s better to go it alone rather than come together for a common good.
Socialism is not communism, it’s about society benefiting as a whole.
3
The GOP has finally tossed away the fig leaf covering its fealty to its corporate and 1% funders, and masters.
3
As a former Republican, if I were to be able to vote more than once in the 2020 election, I would vote over 100 times against Donald Trump.
Years from now Americans will measure Donald Trump’s presidency as the lowest point in American politics and the lowest place in which a president could possibly be.
8
Perhaps, with a bit of fiscal restraint, a 10-year Value Added Tax of 1-2% across the board could wipe off a considerable amount of the debt. Such an amount would have minimal impact on most pocketbooks. ALSO, those who can afford more should simply volunteer it. With the irregular holdings of those fortunate enough to be in the top 2%, a bit of financial altruism is certainly in order.
1
Sure, they're going to be silent about deficits until January 21, 2020 when they be SCREECHING about how Social Security is bankrupting our nation.
9
Tax revenues are at record levels.
Continuously increased spending is the problem.
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are where most money goes.
Maybe these Big Three can be reduced.
Right. Best to kick citizens to the curb while continuing to erode tax receipts which are not the highest in history when adjusted for population and inflation.
1
@Dr. John
Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP is at historic lows. Really, really, historic lows.
Tax revenues measured in dollars is not meaningful, as the population always grows, and, hopefully, the economy itself grows. And government spending grows because the population grows.
Medicare, Medicaid and SS have taxes that pay for themselves. What you suggest is to collect those special taxes, and then use the money for something else. Great.
@Dr. John Or maybe, just maybe, I don't know, cut the military budget perhaps?
What you miss is that there are different forms of fiscal conservatism. One form is heightened concern about the deficit/debt that is agnostic as to whether that is addressed by taxes or spending or to the distribution of the costs of reducing the deficit.
However, the version of fiscal conservatism that dominates today's Republican Party is one of using fiscal policy to advance a conservative social agenda. That means showering benefits (tax cuts, contracts, spending) on those deemed "virtuous" in the conservative universe at the expense (tax hikes, spending cuts) of those deemed "undeserving."
4
The author mentions deficits under Obama but I don't believe he said anything about the economic mess Obama inherited from the previous administration .....if there had not been the massive spending and bailout then Trump would have inherited a depressed economy...... the 2017 tax cuts, although aimed at the wrong segment of society
might have made some sense in that case
6
I remember seeing a quote from a long-time public servant (paraphrased, due to a shoddy memory):
1) Voters want it all
2) they want it immediately
3) they want it for free
4) if they can't get it for free, they want someone else to pay for it.
Another saying comes to mind: taxation is the art of plucking the most feathers from the goose with the least amount of hissing.
But as everyone knows, either by experience or observation, if you max out your credit card, then lose your job, you've got some serious problems.
3
It's an opinion piece. But it's typical. It is speaking up now. But I feel like it's a precursor statement. We are all a little tired of the hyperbole. Your ideas don't work if you want what you want. You have to pay for things. Even war. And we can't be a standing army alone, nor can we be an insurance plan with an army. So assessment is one thing, but it's the solutions that have been around for 40 years that are in error. Just like they were with Marx.
Conservatism was never "built around limiting the burden that government places on citizens". It was built on maintaining existing power structures and maintaining social order. Fiscal conservatism only ever matters to the movement when non-conservatives are in power, and it only matters as a blunt instrument to prevent government from addressing other burdens facing citizens, like health care.
6
None of this should come as any surprise to anyone. the horrid trump was installed to transfer wealth and the disastrous giveaway masquerading as a 'tax cut' was exactly why he continues to foul the chair at 1600 Penn.
3
“Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around.”--Rush Limbaugh
I tip my hat to Rush Limbaugh, a Southeast Missouri State University dropout who has a better understanding of "conservative" thought in the U.S. than any Harvard-Yale-Princeton educated "intellectual" working at National Review or the Heritage Foundation.
The long-term goal of conservatives in the United States is to create a permanent oligarchy, the kind of place where your typical brutal landowning elite in Haiti, Pakistan, or the Philippines can feel at home. Self-professed "liberals" in San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere are inadvertently aiding this cause by refusing to support measures to keep spiraling housing costs under control.
1
"At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge, which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. "
Where are Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan?? I thought the "Freedom Caucus" was ALL about fiscal responsibility?? Why aren't they decrying the financial mess we have facing us with deficits exploding?
Ah, that's right: they ONLY care about budgets when it is a democratic president in the White House. Otherwise, every day is Christmas to them. People of no principle. The "Freedom Caucus" has done nothing to benefit this nation. More worthless members of Congress would be hard to find.
5
You know Phillip, the problem is that the GOP does not believe in deficit reduction. They only want to eliminate the programs they don't want like education, social security or anything else that actually HELPS people. Red states are doing it too, moving more burden for higher ed onto students, starving the public K-12 so they can have more church and private based schooling to push their ignorant agenda.
In fact, the GOP insanely keeps wanting to spend MORE money on our bloated military. So lets not give them credit for any responsible running of our goverment.
1. Reduce Military spending to reduce our deficit spend
2. For the rest, raise taxes to reduce our deficits and debt over time.
There are other methods to reduce the public debt over time, such as allowing a somewhat higher rate of inflation, (read Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century).
5
Conservatism was to American politicians as Communism was to Soviet apparatchiks: a fig leaf to cover their greed and their lust for power. The avaricious elites and the megalomaniacs may mutter appropriate words, but it's all kabuki. Or as one momism goes, "Actions speak louder than words!"
3
Silent on deficits means silence on the burden on our children and grandchildren so their buddies can party hard today. Silence on the environment means our children and grandchildren may not have an inhabitable planet on which to live. Silence on Trump means our children and grandchildren may not have a country in which to live as free men and women. But, let one woman try to abort and wholly molly all you know what breaks out.
5
For decades, that is all I heard from Republicans and their Tea Party members; the deficits are exploding and we must get them under control. It was priority number 1. That issue defined the Republicans.
Now that Trump is in, apparently deficits are irrelevant to these people. Their hypocrisy is there for all to see.
6
@Babel It would be awfully nice if American voters would remember this for once and for all.
@Flaminia Peer at the empty gaze of a Trump voter at his rallies.
The Republican Party today: profile in (absence of) courage.
3
Fiscal conservatism was always a bogus issue for most of its “adherents”.
The Tea Party was just using it as a smoke screen. What they were really mad about was that the President was black. They flocked to Trump’s racism without giving it a second thought. They love that they don’t have to hide it anymore.
4
When Republicans signed their anti-tax pledge they abandoned responsible budgeting. Government budgeting takes both cutting expenses and adding income. Having pledged never to add income Republicans are left with trying to balance budgets with one tool tied behind their backs.
That leaves Democrats as the only nearly sane political party we have. They haven't taken any silly anti-tax pledges, and they have suggested reasonable ways to raise taxes on those who are more than able to afford to pay them, without causing any damage to the economy.
In addition, Democrats want spending on investments in people that will pay itself off over the long run, such as healthcare (healthy people work more, earn more, and pay more in taxes) and education (educated people earn more and pay more in taxes).
When it comes to fiscal responsibility there's only one choice -- Democrats.
3
Social Security and Medicare do not add to the deficit. The have a separate tax stream. Right now they pay their own way.
6
And it’s the interest the US Government pays on borrowing from these programs that helps drive the deficit. For some reason this is never a part of the conversation surrounding deficits and “fiscal conservatism”.
1
@M Medicare taxes were never increased to pay for Part D and the Part D premiums that members pay each month only cover about 25% of the cost of the Rx benefits. Those benefits do not pay their own way. They are highly subsidized. The SS taxes were also calculated before the average lifespan of Americans began to increase. They are too low to cover the future obligations that are coming down the pipeline as Boomers are retiring and have been for some time.
In addition to rising health care costs and the retirement of millions of baby boomers as causes of our massive debt projection, Mr. Klein has conveniently forgets to mention Mr. Trump's massive tax cut.
2
“Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around.”
It's just a bogus as the Republican concern for Russia as the "bear in the woods." That was just a conservative trope designed to scare people into voting them into power. Same thing goes for the old conservative ideal of "rule of law" and the idea that we need to take a "leadership role in the Middle East."
The right wing Republican party has always been about gaining power to destroy our liberal democracy. The "arguments" never meant anything. Were it any different, Republicans would be speaking out forcefully against Trump.
1
"A movement built around limiting the burden that government places on citizens"
No. That is, arguably, what some libertarians think libertarianism is but it is not at all what conservatism is. The traditional sense of the term is a philosophy that seeks to uphold the existing order of society, and limit the speed of change, while denying that there is such a thing as economic injustice.
The contemporary American political sense of the word is a euphemism for a radical reactionary movement that seeks to undo the status quo that resulted from positive changes that occurred over the last century. The idea that American "conservatives" of the last 50 years have ever sincerely held, coherent views about public finance is a pure con. Conservatism can't and won't be undermined by budget deficits, because budget deficits don't actually matter in the sense that conservatives insincerely profess that they do while their opponents hold office.
1
The crowning achievement of the Tea Party is the election of Donald Trump not some budget deal. The Tea Party was a reaction to something (can't quite put my finger on what) about Barack Obama) and deficits were just a cudgel. Given Trump's popularity among Republicans, I suspect you'd be hard-pressed to find a Tea-Partier who's not an avid Trumpist. Ask them about budget deals, on the other hand, and mostly you'll draw blank stares.
4
You lost me at "crowning achievement of the Tea Party."
1
Conservatives are all about cutting taxes, but are cowards when it comes to cutting the programs those same taxes used to support. Presumably, they are cowards because they know that while their rhetoric attracts legions of ignorant citizens, real cuts to programs many people don't even know they rely on would be political suicide.
The sad reality is your average tea party type only cares about social spending when he or she believes the money is going to people "not like them."
306
@Matthew F. Daumen
The oligarchy give the GOP marching orders and they follow in lock-step--never for a minute thinking about anyone else.
5
@Matthew F. Daumen
Funny thing, they seem to have all the money in the world for what Dwight Eisenhower called the "Military Industrial Complex."
12
@Mark McIntyre Yep.
3
The entire Republican Party is dirty and corrupt, more so than even Trump. This is now eminently clear to everyone.
The continued, illegal circus antics these clowns pull every day to try to cover up and obstruct justice, and the regular revelations of their complicity in treason, criminal activity and cover ups of same, provide ample evidence of their collective guilt.
Lock them all up! And throw away the keys.
1
By and large, D's are tax and spend. By and large, R's are borrow and spend. R's current amnesia about deficit spending will suddenly cure itself during the next recession, and they'll use it as the reason (not just 'a' reason but 'the' reason) that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will have to be "reformed". And, of course, "reformed" is a euphemism for "privatized." They're going to get what they want, and everyone who depends on any kind of a social safety net is going to be in a world of hurt.
2
So tax receipts (income) are up but spending (outgo) is up even more. In your household, when your outgo exceeds your income, you cut your spending or declare bankruptcy.
It's clear that the federal government needs to reduce spending.
@Afirefly It's not true that the only option is to reduce spending. So it certainly isn't true that it's "clear" the feds need to reduce spending [as the only solution]. As my favorite teacher used to say to me, "Guess again."
1
It seems that the average taxpayer has caught on to the lie of fiscal conservatism and tax breaks stimulate the economy bologna. Soon the pendulum will swing back the other way. Republican conservatism will shrivel back to its natural state.
1
The reality is that the Republican's only paid lip service to deficit's and the corresponding increases in debt. While Democrat's unapologetically embraced irresponsible deficit spending the Republican's pretended to care about it, but in reality were speaking out of both sides of their mouth. After all politicians discovered back in the '60's they could use deficit spending in government programs to buys votes once the mighty USD became the benchmark.
We have a spending problem, not a taxation problem. We can vacuum everyone's pockets and still be very deep in the hole.
But this does have to be addressed on both sides, spending and taxation. We do need to increase taxes on everyone. But that'll go nowhere unless spending is addressed ACROSS the board. Meaning no favorites or "untouchables". Personally I still favor adding a VAT.
If we want to do all the things that everyone wants our government to do, but instead of rational compromise we have class warfare - mostly in reverse, what is it we expect.
The short term feedback loop was, give rich people money, rich people buy government, rich people manipulate government to give them more money, rich people keep money silence government, government stops working, people get mad, rich people suppress mad people in media and by dirty tricks, eventually the "other's people money" these rich people took can't even pay for the broken government we have, and our citizens liabilities explode, and rich people build walls or leave to wage economic warfare on other people.
The path to fix America is a windy and treacherous one, and there are plenty of things that can go wrong, especially with foreign intervention and so many rich people in America that don't really care about Americans.
We better start thinking about what we will do if our country has reached its bottom, because like most cancers or addictions drastic measures are needed and few doctors know what to do, and those who do have to get elected by an electorate of broken, angry and fragmented people.
Those who killed the golden goose need to pay for its fixing, or pay just on general principle just to show they should still be allowed to live here.
1
As a fiscal conservative I have to agree with the author that our ever greater debt is an existential crisis not just to conservatism but to our nation as a whole.
Unfortunately both parties refuse to address the elephant in the room, too much spending on entitlements and too little income from taxes.
Both of those must be addressed if we are to get our fiscal house in order but neither party will address either in a serious way.
However the Democrats' plans for a vast expansion of social spending is far more dangerous than Republican talk of cutting taxes.
Taxes can always be raised.
Cutting social spending once a program is established, as we see with ObamaCare, is all but impossible.
I think the elephant in the room is the 700 billion dollar per YEAR spending on military adventurism and bloated defense spending. This, more than anything else, is unsustainable and damaging to our national interest.
4
@Barooby I disagree. If anything, we need to increase our social services to those that are underprivileged, not decrease them. The more we assist those who need it, the better off we are as a whole. A rising tide raises all boats after all, and it says volumes of our moral charter about how we treat those who have the least.
Domestic spending should match that of defense, and we should have taxes according to that.
2
The idea that the Tea Party was concerned about the deficit is ludicrous. As always, they were conservative, elderly white people afraid that "undeserving" minorities were getting handouts. This is the only fiscal issue that concerns them and why Republican candidates are always campaigning on budget cuts and "waste, fraud and abuse" because in the end it's all about racism.
426
@David In fact if you recall, the tea party movement started with a selfish reaction to the idea that underwater homeowners might get a bailout. They didn't want to pay for the "losers".
12
@David,
That's basically the crux of the Limbaugh quote in the article.
6
@David
I would say it was mostly about the racism aimed at President Obama. They are still racists.
10
The End of our "economic stability" is inevitable and EVERYBODY knows this. The collapse will be like no one has ever seen nor imagined. And no one will attempt to turn things around. Not our leaders, nor the money lenders, nor the people themselves. Look at the numbers of commentators. That alone indicates how many NY Times subscribers would not even read this article. Spooky. Enjoy it while you still can.
Here is my question and I would appreciate comments: This man has done everything he can do to tear us apart. And he has done criminal activities like extortion for the destruction of his political enemies. He has publicly insulted the mentally ill, war heroes and even his own Evangelical base. He has had affairs with porn stars on the eve of his child's birth and has used campaign finance to pay them off. Yet he is like that used car Slender Man, flapping in a hurricane. Why doesn't he fall?
7
This is further proof that the GOP is the party of hypocrisy; they don't really care about any principles, just power and greed.
4
I'm sorry, but saying that Trump is the reason we have so much debt and that small government conservatives are trying hard to keep down spending does not dovetail with our recent history.
Reagan and Bush Senior jumped our deficits and debt tremendously, though Bush did try to be somewhat responsible with a tax increase despite it breaking a campaign promise.
Bill Clinton raised taxes a little too, and he managed to reduce the deficit enough to get a surplus. He had Republicans saying he was a wasteful spender as long as they could.
Bush Junior cut taxes when he was pushing for two war fronts, pushed through a new entitlement without taxes to pay for it, and didn't have his regulators actually regulate out of control banks. His VP, Dick Cheney, said at the time "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."
Obama faced conditions that gave him very big deficits starting out, but he cut them down below mid-Bush Junior levels. All the while he faced Republicans who howled about the Obama deficits.
Now we have Trump, the deficits are booming again, and Republicans are silent on spending they would have called appalling if it was Clinton or Obama at the helm.
Sorry, but the GOP hasn't been the party of fiscal conservatism for decades. That's been the Democrats. And that's true at the state level too: blue states tend to give more to the federal government, red states tend to take more--even while they decry "takers".
10
You are only correct in that their lack of interest in the debt when Republicans are in power in contrast to their crazy and completely inappropriate reaction during the great recession, destroys their credibility. Now nobody needs to listen to any of their concerns about the economy.
2
Half of all births in America are now paid for by taxpayers - most of whom are not millennials, all of whom are in their prime breeding years. And that's just the start of government checks for each of those kids + parent.
@Maggie
Many industrialized nations pay for all births. What program are paying for births? Are the number higher in states that refused ACA support? How much taxpayer money supports hospitals in general? Who are these "not millennials" in their "prime breeding years?"
An really, what percentage of the budget are we talking about?
2
@Maggie Although the average percentage of births covered by Medicaid hovers around 50% per state on average, the large numbers of births in places like NYC, LA, Etc. bring the national average down to only about 20% that are covered by Medicaid for the nation as a whole. Kaiser actually wrote on article with the stat in it this week: https://khn.org/news/khns-what-the-health-all-about-medicaid/
@Maggie I don't think i've ever cringed more at a NYT comment than reading "prime breeding years" before. Do you have a peer-reviewed source to prove that half were "paid by taxpayers"? Do you have a source that "just the start of government checks"? These assertions have nothing to do with the article, and are tone def at best.
Under President Trump, federal tax revenues are up to record levels.
Continually increased spending is the problem.
Which of your federal benefits can be reduced?
1
Which benefit? My massive tax cut. Take it back , as I can afford the $467 this year.
3
Federal benefits? What’s that?
@Dr. John
Their quietly stated goal is to run up so much debt that they can then have an excuse to end Social Security and Medicare. They have said so.
Look up Starve the Beast.
3
The reality is that both parties have abandoned fiscal responsibility and they have done so because that is what the voters want. Anyone who runs on a platform of reduced government spending and higher taxes will be marginalized.
In the end, the government debt will be monetized by the Federal Reserve (not even mentioned in this opinion). There is no other way this ends.
39
@Robert
Not sure how you can say the Democratic party has abandoned fiscal responsibility. Democrats believe in spending, sure, but they acknowledge that it needs to be paid for, sometimes by raising taxes. I'd rather have tax & spend people in office than borrow and spend.
47
@Matthew Klipper - Exactly, we had tax increases in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations. We had tax cuts in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations.
I don't wonder how George W. Bush can afford that expensive condo in Dallas. He stole the money from us.
17
@Robert
The last arguably balanced budget was under Clinton. The one before that was under Carter. The GOP blew the National Debt under all GOP presidents since. The debt blew up under Obama because of the GOP Great Recession, when Fed revenues (tax collections) dropped as businesses crashed. Plus the lousy GOP budget the last 6 years under Obama.
So, just "No' for this "both sides' stuff. No data backs that.
33
The Republican’s long claimed concern about big deficits and the national debt Is obviously a lie. Their real concern is that he wealthy pay less in taxes. To justify it, they’ve demonized government as an an enemy of the people and pushed hard to cut investments of all kinds in the country with the exception of the trillions they’ve squandered on endless wars. Future historians will be appalled by the damage the Republicans have done to this country since 1980.
5
Time for fiscal conservatives to speak up and get active. Interest costs are going to turbo charge future deficits when interest rates revert to historical norms
1
The only President in the modern era to balance a budget was Bill Clinton.
The gop claim to care about deficits has been a charade. The gop's hero, Reagan, created enormous deficits.
The gop "establishment" -- i.e., the business class -- doesn't care about robbing the future as long as they get their tax cuts, which Trump gladly delivered for them.
Balancing the budget is easy if you want to. (1) Raise the top bracket to 45%, and create a new 60% bracket for the ultra-rich. (2) Tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income. (3) Lift the cap on social security/payroll taxes. (4) Restore corporate rates to Clinton-era levels. (5) Increase the estate tax.
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@Dr. J.
Bill Clinton was serious about deficit reduction, and he offered five very good budgets, none of which were balanced. The Gingrich Congress demanded a truly balanced budget, and finally forced one on Clinton who complained that it was too austere and would "balance the budget on the backs of the poor."
5
@Dr. J. bill clinton claims to have balanced the budget but he did it while using the social security resource as revenue. he didn't actually balance the budget. but, of course, every president since elmer fudd has used the social security resource as revenue, even obama. so no big deal.
2
@Livonian
L.A. historical revisionism; read Steglitz for truth of clinton economics...it was indeed gingrich who ("contract on America") ended welfare, but Mario Cuomo, bowing out of candidacy, explained how Reagan deficits created clinton economics...irony prevails...
5
Conservatives cut taxes depriving the government of revenue while at the same time increasing its military spending which is already the biggest part of a budget. Then they act all shocked and chagrined that the deficit increases. Then, they claim the only way to balance the budget is cutting social spending. How very convenient.
3
"With leading Democratic presidential candidates proposing tens of trillions of dollars of new federal spending, Republicans’ abdication of fiscal conservatism leaves Americans with no responsible party." I nearly choked when I read this. Is the implication that the Republicans have EVER been a responsible party in recent memory?
3
Taxes are the answer, and they have to be higher and equitable. Post WW2 the top income bracket was paying around 90%, and I think many would call that a boom time in America. Your average worker, such as myself, is already getting hit. I make 50K/year before taxes and deductions, and my take home is 27K. Almost 50% of my wages goes to medicare, social security, pension contribution (county employee) , and healthcare. Oh and that's before student loan debt.
We need trillions in investments in infrastructure, education, health care and other areas, and we have to pay for it. If someone who makes 50K a year pays 50% in real taxes and contributions, why can't those in the top income bracket? Why can't businesses?
We need to pay for the things that we need. We need to invest in our country, and we need to have a progressive system that will pay for it. A rising tide lifts all boats, and raising wages, services, and having an economy that works for everyone costs money.
8
It seems like a pretty straight-forward 1-2 punch:
1) Starve the beast - Conservative practice of cutting taxes to undercut the ability of government to function. The idea being that if you don't want big government, make it impossible to support.
2) Trump's instant gratification budgeting. This accelerates the beast starving, and gives his base lots of bread and circuses in the interim.
This article then throws a fit about the leading Dem candidates, worrying about the spending. As I am sure someone here has mentioned, the deficit has gone down every time a Democrat has been in office since Bill Clinton. The deficit has ballooned under every Republican in that time. The conservative hold on the label of the fiscally conservative party needs to be addressed. They aren't.
4
The author rather than asserting platitudes should explain why Japan functions with 2.5 X the debt to GDP ratio and with a much superior infrastructure. What aside from poor governance makes our smaller deficit more of a problem than the Japanese larger deficit. If he asserted that American's teeth will fall out with the current level of debt his remarks would be ridiculed but this editorial is no better founded. Rather than a conventional wisdom editorial with dire consequences readers are entitled to a reasoned argument based on existing historical evidence. He needs to explain why the future American debt crisis will be like Greece's debt crisis. The author forgets in absolute worse case the U.S. can default on its debt. While this is obviously disastrous in regards to future borrowing, it may be better than the crushing burden's the author predicts will happen.
2
I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that the interest on such a big debt would be enough to pay for most of Medicare for All.
@fishergal
So you're proposing that the US default on it's debt, meaning stop paying interest, and use that instead to fund a single payer health care system? Do you understand what that means? One doesn't need to be an economist to understand what happens when someone stops paying off their debts.
Don’t lose track of Starve the Beast.
That is the openly stated goal of the GOP—declared publicly by Paul Ryan, among others—to run up so much debt that they can use the high debt as an excuse to end Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Really. You can look it up.
Trump is the perfect vehicle to help them reach this goal. He is widely despised, and is doing huge damage in many ways, Including Running Up Debt.
Then, whenever he leaves office, they can wring their hands and say how much they hated him just like us but were powerless to stop him. Then, using Trump’s debt, they can say: “well, we need to cut expenses. We need to cut those giveaway programs like SS and Medicare. “
Maybe that’s a part of why the GOP has not spoken out against Trump. He helps them Starve the Beast.
8
If every individual making more than $1 million in income was taxed at the same rate I am, the deficit would disappear in a decade, with plenty of money to spare for social programs. In addition to this, I have contributed to Social Security and Medicare for 42 years and am very unlikely to withdraw as much as I have invested. "Invested" being the operative word.
5
"Republicans’ abdication of fiscal conservatism leaves Americans with no responsible party." I disagree - we should not forget that the Cheney/Bush anti govt. mantra was 'spend it to death' and that the current corporate U.S. tax rate is shamefully low - Teddy Roosevelt would be appalled at the thrall Corporations have over our Government today! Reasonable Democratic party policy would be to first level the taxation playing field for all of us and only then take action to heal our schools/skills training, the Infrastructure and preserve & protect the 'entitlements' which most of us have paid substantially into. While we are at it, let's get our environmental policies back to scientific reality as well.
3
Mr. Kein would like to reclaim the mantle of responsible fiscal conservative, but his article only demonstrates that "responsible fiscal conservative" is an oxymoron. Mr. Klein complains about the increasing cost of entitlements. I took a look at cbo.gov to see what the budget breakdown is. I saw no category under the term "entitlements". I did see two major categories, though - Mandatory and Discretionary. Mandatory expenditures are composed mainly of Social Security and Medicare, the programs that millions of people like me have paid into for decades through payroll deductions. So called fiscal conservatives want to call these "entitlements" in an attempt to disparage them as some kind of welfare. These programs are called mandatory because the federal government is legally obligated to pay recipients who have paid into those programs for most of their lives. Mr. Klein would prefer to not be responsible in meeting mandatory obligations and to instead spend more money on discretionary spending such as defense spending and of course get more tax cuts. Like all fiscal conservatives, Mr. Klein, prefers to avoid mandatory obligatons through reframing (distorting) those mandatory expenditures as "entitlements". There is no such thing as a responsible fiscal conservative.
19
@Tim Doran I must have misread the article. The author states he is against increasing defense spending and tax cuts. I just re-read the article and verified it says that. Did I miss something?
@jeffk I will concede I was responding more to what David Klein has written elsewhere. For example in the Washington Examiner, Mr. Klein wrote "The welfare state is destroying America".
In this article he started with FDR's creation of Social Security and concluded the article with the assertion that the welfare state, meaning Social Security, will destroy America. Klein and others of his ilk are engaging in a willful act of deception. As I stated in my original post, there is no such thing as entitlements according to the CBO. There is mandatory and discretionary spending. Social Security and Medicare spending is mandatory under the law. If so called fiscal conservatives such as Philip Klein are truly committed to being responsible, they will cease from reframing mandatory spending as entitlements and will focus on reducing discretionary spending such as defense spending and raising government revenues.
1
Why is there no shortage of Republican/Conservative voices on the opinion pages but a paucity of Progressive voices?
The screeching about the bogeyman "socialism" is a daily drumbeat in what is supposedly mainstream or (according to Republicans) "liberal" media. Where are the proposals from the Progressive/Liberal end of the spectrum and why are they not given a fair hearing?
As to Mr. Klein's writing, we can balance the budget by:
1-Canceling the GOP Tax Scam.
2-Cutting the bloated corporate welfare in the Agriculture, Interior, and Energy Departments. We give away public natural resources by subsidy.
3-Taxing high-frequency securities transactions.
4-Taxing income from financial investment at the same rate as income from labor.
5-Putting a budget clamp on the Defense Department. We can start by a full audit of the DoD with no off-budget items hidden under the cloak of national security.
6-Taxing stock buybacks at 50%. It is an inefficient process and this will discourage the practice and add revenue.
7-Stop pretending faith-based groups are non-partisan and taxing their income.
8-Taxing usurious interest income (more than 10% APR) at 100%.
9-Mandating that every federal agency funded by general revenue cut spending by 10% in absolute Dollars.
That will be a good start.
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@David Gregory
I agree with all of your points except the last one. Many agencies need substantial funding increases. Philip Klein needs to read Paul Krugman's latest columns, as it is obvious that he is one more of those people who do not understand the nature of government debt at all. However, when debt is caused by tax cuts for the rich in times of full employment, that is just bad policy. As the Bible states, we should be raising taxes during the "seven fat years" and cutting them during the "seven lean years."
1
@James Ward
I am sure many agencies need money in many places, but overall the budgets could be cut. Otherwise, an agency may have enough money but not distributed in a way that allows it to do its job well.
Republicans, for the most part, are disingenuous regarding the budget and size of government, but there are many laws and agencies that have outlived their usefulness. Others are duplicative of other activities of either the Federal or State governments. Regulations should be beneficial but not onerous and compliance is often a jungle and should not be.
Also, as one who once served in the Army working with DoD and DoA civilians, there are positions that could be eliminated without compromising the mission.
I am not bashing civil servants- my brother is a Patent Examiner in the USPTO. The Federal bureaucracy is a mess.
The GOP has never been the party of fiscal responsibility, but for some reason its intellectual class has always suffered under that delusion or just plain lied about the real object of the party. The goal of the GOP is to spend a lot of money on entitlements for its voters (i.e., older/white people) and the military industrial complex, while cutting taxes for corporations and the rich. The math has never added up, and in fact they have blown up deficits each time they were in power since Reagan. This time is no different. The Tea Party was nothing more than a bunch of self-righteous, unsophisticated and easily manipulated people who had no idea how government works or what it does, but who really just wanted money spent on them instead of someone else they thought less deserving. The movement was a populist fraud, a vehicle through which cynical politicians (McConnell, Boehner) and donors (the Koch brothers) sought to destroy Obama. Is it any wonder that the Tea Party's biggest leaders in Congress are not Trump's biggest supporters? At least Democrats are open about what they want: increase benefits/social programs for poor and middle class by raising taxes on the rich and the corporations. You may not agree with that, but when it's been done under Clinton and Obama the economy (and the stock market) did just fine.
6
Barack Obama: Under President Obama, the national debt grew the most dollar-wise. He added $8.588 trillion. This 74% increase was the fifth-largest. Obama's budgets included the economic stimulus package. It added $831 billion by cutting taxes, extending unemployment benefits, and funding public works projects.
Reagan added more to the debt than the previous 39 presidents combined - and then so did Bush 43, then Obama almost pulled it off too. We were at $10 T after George W., and under Obama we ended up close to $20 T.
The main budget busters are democratic inventions: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Great Society policies. So anyone reading this article needs to start there - and decide whether forgiving education loans, healthcare for all, open borders, green energy initiatives and all the other socialist policies the Left wants to implement are wise.
Eventually debt has to matter. But every politician likes to kick that can down the road as far as possible and leave it up to the next guy. But FDR and LBJ are the main reasons for the pain we are currently experiencing.
@Donald Driver
The subject is Trump and the Republicans, in case you cannot figure that out.
Obama has a very constrained set of options left him thanks to the financial meltdown, in case you have forgotten that.
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@Donald Driver
No not FDR or LBJ. Donald Trump is the reason with his " tax cut" . You cannot run a country and spend trillions on endless wars without taxes. His " tax cut" cost me $4000 this year. In the meantime, corporations paid less than I did, along with millions of other hard working people. He has increased the deficit by 15.trillion.
Do the Republicans complain? No; not a word.
3
@Donald Driver you omit that a lot of the deficit growth under Obama was through inheriting two wars.
3
The debt does not matter. Take it from Paul Kruman
The NY Times 2019/01/09
"Melting Snowballs and the Winter of Debt"
"The obsession with debt is looking foolish even at full employment. That’s the message I take from Olivier Blanchard’s presidential address to the American Economic Association. To be fair, Blanchard — one of the world’s leading macroeconomists, formerly the extremely influential chief economist of the I.M.F. — was cautious in his pronouncements, and certainly didn’t go all MMT and say that debt never matters. But his analysis nonetheless makes the Fix the Debt fixation (yes, they’re still out there) look even worse than before."
I profoundly disagree. I also note an lack of understanding on his part how monetary policy operates.
On Aug 15th 2019 Krugman stated in the NYT "The Federal Reserve basically controls short-term rates, but not long-term rates" whereas the Brookings Institution reported Dec 3rd, 2018: " Economists from the Fed and elsewhere have estimated that the asset purchases (under QE) lowered long-term interest rates by about 1.5 percentage points.”
The debt is a problem. The US net payment on the National Debt in the current FY will be $393.5 billion
Secondly, there only five countries that run a higher deficit as percent of the GDP than the
US (- 4.6) :
Pakistan (-8.9),
Brazil (-5.7),
Egypt (-6.7),
Saudi Arabia (-6.6)
South Africa (-4.8)
Do we really want to be in this company?
1
@Woof
Krugman was clear in his article that the ability to pay the debt must grow faster than the debt. That was a key point in his analysis.
-Of course is not happening now with supply-side nonsense.
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@Woof
Just a note how Trump's best economy EVER is affecting all Americans. Also Devos is doing a wonderful job cutting funds like Republicans love to do. Like that genius ex-Senator Rick Santorum said and I quote
'an educated person is a liberal'. Why is he even on
television? He's a stooge.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-ranks-27th-for-healthcare-and-education-2018-9
I find it incredible that people still marvel at Republican hypocrisy.
8
Conservatism is a failed ideology. It should be under threat. In fact, it should not even exist.
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@Michael J. Cartwright good point. I re-looked the definition of conservatism, "the holding of political views that favor free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas." By definition it does not sound too bad. In practice they have put so many tariffs, subsidies and other controls in place the free enterprise part is out the window. In practice "socially traditional ideas" has really become, "white, evangelical, Christian norms". I'm wrestling with private ownership. I guess the way conservatives attack health care supports private citizens owning their own health care with no help from the government? The other part that baffles me is that conservatives used to be anti-Russia, NK and pro-IC and military. Now they are good with foreign countries influencing our elections and bash the IC and the military, gold star parents and specific military heroes vis a vis McCain and most recently Vindman. Not only have conservatives become dinosaurs, they have become anti-American.
1
@Michael J. Cartwright
You mean like open borders/reparations/free everything Liz Warren who wants to add $34 trillion in national debt to the existing $22 trillion debt?
So where were you when Dick Cheney claimed "Reagan showed that deficits don't matter"? Just curious.
5
This so cute; conservatives pretending to care about deficits again... just in time to stop any future Democratic administration from doing anything to help one who is not a rich Republican donor LOL
5
Please stop letting them get away with using the term “conservative”.
There is absolutely nothing conservative about these con men who continue to loot the Treasury and destroy the country every time that they get the opportunity.
If they are to be considered “conservative”, please include all bank robbers, fraudsters, con men, thieves, and criminals so that we can change the meaning entirely.
They are using that term as just another way to defraud the American people .
It’s a con.
6
Calling today's Republican goofs Radical Fraudsters would be entirely accurate.
Yes, Medicare and Social Security are two of the three pillars of what is becoming very scary debt. The problem is very real, indeed.
But not a word about the absurd amount of money we spend on keeping an absurdly large military? Why is our enormous, bloated military always off the table when these fiscal hawks talk about debt?
We need to force our wealthy allies to do far, far more for their own security than they do. WWII has been over for 75 years. There is no excuse for such dependence.
And we need to get out of these stupid, endless wars, and close down many of our currently 134 overseas military missions abroad.
Yes, the Euros won't like us. There will be short term chaos. We will lose influence abroad. But we may just keep our nation solvent.
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@Livonian
It's more like 1000 bases. At one point, even the Pentagon didn't know how many U.S. bases were around the world.
1
Gosh, it's almost like the GOP only cares about the deficit when a Democrat is in office!
I wonder how many of America's systemic problems can all be traced back to the America's nearly pathological aversion to taxes.
2
I thought this article was agoing to be about cognitive deficits and I was going to say why stop at conservatism?
Why should conservatism be different from anything else Mr. Trump has touched?
Conservatism is what gave the world Mr. Trump. It deserves its ending.
"If you dance with the devil, then you haven’t got a clue, for you think you’ll change the devil, but the devil changes you.”
2
The tax cut benefits have ended up pumping air into stock prices thru stock buybacks. This has created a false sense of economic stability. The numbers tell us that the job growth has been about the same as Obama last 2 years yet that was looked at as a slow growth economy.
In the very near future 70% of the US population will live in 15 states that got hurt by the SALT provisions in the tax bill. That is your real economy. When house prices decline on LI people with incomes of up to $500K will reduce spending and that is where the recession will come from.
At this level of deficit how will we fund the programs necessary to combat the recession?
2
The solution to the problem of deficits is so simple. It's child's play really. If you want to spend more, you need to earn more.
When it comes to government spending, that means that taxes need to go up, up, up!!! And they should - especially on the rich. I'm talking marginal tax rates of 80% on income over $1M. Capital gains needs to be treated as income.
People need to stop believing that they someday will be rich. They (you!) won't - ever. Once you accept this fact, then allowing the rich to pay nothing in taxes is anathema to sanity.
The solution is so simple. I don't understand why people don't seem to get it.
3
@Michael I wished fiscal deficits were that simple. If the government borrowed $1T at today's interest rates and invested the money in infrastructure and education, for example, the positive knock-on would see a much higher return on investment than, let's say, tax cuts that provide a tax holiday for private individuals. Borrowing money to invest should lead to long-term prosperity but borrowing money to fund profligate spending amid anemic savings rates leaves the U.S. vulnerable to another credit crunch.
There are different kinds of spending.
It’s not the spending - we have a revenue problem. Americans vote for tax breaks even if they only see a trickle while the wealthy get the windfall. Our unwillingness to pay our fair share and the fact that we vote for those who give us little will be our downfall.
Save save save- you are going to need every penny.
6
@Deirdre
No question but that Big Tech and corporate America need to pay more corporate taxes. However, half of individual citizens pay no taxes. The middle class and self-employed have been carrying the load for a long time now, on the stte and federal levels.
Seems like Moscow Mitch bears the primary responsibility for the soaring deficits. None of the tax cuts or spending increases would have happened without his relentless dominance of the senate.
8
Conservatism isn't threatened, it was soundly and utterly defeated when Trump, a multi-bankruptcy profligate debtor, speculator, and lavish spender, was elected.
Conservatives should by now have realized, fiscal responsibility is not to be in the President's vocabulary of great words, and remaining Republicans in Congress have signed on to every budget-busting move he's thrown at the wall.
In any case, McConnell and the GOTP (it's Trump's party, not to be confused with any Republican party of yore) in Congress are just waiting to slash and burn any and every social program in sight immediately after the next election, claiming, with suddenly discovered alarm, that deficits (which they sponsored) are bad things.
Trump would happily default on every US obligation. After all, look where that's gotten him.
4
@Neander Agreed. Trump has said that he loves debt. Sure: Borrow from suckers, and repay them thirty cents on the dollar. That’s the Trump way.
Their goal has long since become to destroy government--and they keep right on working at that. Massive tax cuts are their weapon, not their goal.
3
Mr. Klein makes a good point that the GOP is increasingly dependent on older voters who are more dependent on government spending. He should have also included rural voters in that observation. If a Democrat wins in 2020 I look forward to GOP deficit hawks once again coming out of the woodwork to warn against deficits.
Regarding some of the Democratic candidates' big-spending promises: at least when Democrats propose ambitious plans like these, they usually claim, and show, a way to pay for it. The GOP just says that tax cuts will pay for themselves. We know how that works.
3
Why is it fiscal conservatives only want to cut spending? There's another way to reduce the deficit without further eviscerating public services. TAXES. Why not go back to the marginal rates of the 1950's. It didn't hinder entrepreneurship or economic growth then. Why would it now? We might even be able to afford what is normal in civilized countries--universal healthcare, free public higher education, parental leave, etc., etc.
5
@Taykadip
Go back to the 1950's? That was when white man had more power pre-civil rights, woman were second class citizens and gays we forced to hid in the shadows.
The Republicans got crucified for suggesting a return to that time period.
1
Republicans never, ever cared about deficits, except to enact laws to make them as big as possible in hopes that one day they would be so big and problematic that Americans would let the repubs eliminate the entire government as a cost saving measure. At least that was the plan of Grover norquist, to whom all republican positions swear fealty.
4
There is always another sound bite..."Past performance is no guarantee of future results."
"The C.B.O. warns that this unprecedented level of debt, left unchecked, greatly increases the risk of a fiscal crisis, in which investors shy away from purchasing United States bonds without sky-high interest rates."
It is way worse than the above....it is more like: "Crushing US and global debt will lead to global economic collapse."
2
While the U.S. certainly faces threats from multiple directions, the national debt could, in theory, be fixed -- or at least mitigated -- in a single bill from Congress. The future generations that Mr. Klein seems to show at least superficial concern for will no doubt be far more burdened by another of Republicans' many abdications: their ongoing indifference to the ravages of climate change. To the Republican party climate change is a hoax to be outlived. To their progeny, it will be a burden to be survived.
1
Why is this a problem? There's no sign that our economy is overheating from these deficits. It's also odd that our federal government's huge assets are never counted against its liabilities, a treatment that no corporation ever gets. And since our workforce is growing slower than in the past, the private sector has fewer demands for capital expansion so the government is not crowding out the private sector.
@Will Assets should only be counted if they're fungible with cash. I'd like to see some plans to sell excess military bases. Perhaps we could also sell our nuclear weapon IP, eh?
Oh, no.... Reagan proved deficits don't matter, remember.
Is there anyone left who does not get the con game the GOP runs over deficits? The fiscal conservatives will return the minute the GOP is run out of power and a:
- No longer controls spending.
and b:
- Would love nothing better than to force austerity on the government, drive the economy back into recession, blame the democrats and seize power...again.
At which point they will then explode the deficits back to over $1 trillion and remind you that Reagan proved deficits don't matter.
2
From the very title I knew the author was putting forth a totally false premise:
"Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong."--Luke Skywalker.
In the next to last paragraph, the author totally contradicts his whole premise!
"a long-running tendency of Republicans to rail against spending during Democratic administrations only to abandon fiscal restraint when one of their own is in power."
Every, and I mean EVERY Republican President starting with Reagan has been totally fiscally IRRESPONSIBLE! That's Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and now Trump, seeking to beat Bush II. Meanwhile the last 3 Democratic Presidents have sought to bring the Deficit under control, and Clinton actually left a surplus! Obama faced TRILLIONS in off the books expenditures, and lowered the deficit nearly $900 billion, while cutting unemployment in half.
"Fiscal Conservativism" is an oxymoron. All they are interested in is:
1) Tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations.
2) Getting rid of ALL transfer and social welfare payments for the neediest.
3) SOMEHOW getting the Social Security gold mine into Wall Street investments.
4) Killing Medicare, MediCaid, and the ACA
5) Getting rid of ALL regulations on business, whether it's polluting, workers' safety & health, anti-trust, or unethical business practices.
Why ANYONE believed Trump, who only made billions in LOSSES to his investors, who called himself the King of Debt, could end deficits and the National Debt, is a depressing mystery.
4
It will give the GOP an excuse to collapse Medicare, Social Security, the EPA and all branches of government that get in the way of corporate profits and greed.
1
Let me see. Larger tax cuts and greater deficits. Lower corporate tax rates and larger deficits. Oh, but we must reduce Social Security and Medicare. Why not take the top off of Social Security contributions so that the high earners pay at the same rate on all of their earnings as do the lower paid workers? All of the calculations of Social Security solvency on that basis show no deficit as far as the eye can see. The NYT Editorial Board is exactly the phony media Paul Krugman was discussing in his article in today’s edition. Are all big media in the Koch Brothers’ pockets?
The existential threat to American conservatism is its relentless bad faith and dishonesty, and the profoundly dark motivations that have driven the conservative movement ever since Goldwater.
Trump has made all this impossible for the rest of us to ignore. You can't hide it any longer -- no matter how many billionaires you have, how much dark money they spend, how many right-wing think tanks they fund, or how strong their alliances with anti-democratic extremists all around the world.
Many poor whites do not like to consider themselves moochers, although all evidence points to the contrary. Let's take Kentucky for example. During the Turtle's six terms, it has remained near bottom in every indicator of social well being and ranks second among states in the amount of Federal subsidies it receives. While Kentuckians like to parade around like they're all Daniel Boone, living off the land, they hold out a beggars bowl to the rest of the country; they also went heavily for Trump in 2016. There's no doubt in my mind that when the GOP inevitably starts to call for cuts in social programs to address the deficit, these same people will be joining in the chorus, although they happen to be its major beneficiaries. How do you address such a stunning lack of self-awareness?
3
@stan continople The GOP preys on the uneducated and lost souls who believe all the mistruths that are fed to them.
The GOP has bought into trumps plans and their own selfish tax breaks for the rich in a similar manner that a similar body bought the fuhrers plans in the 1930’s. We and our planet will suffer the consequences for years to come. Shuttle to Mars, anyone?
1
McConnell plans to bankrupt the government forcing reduction of what he calls "entitlement" programs. Unneeded tax breaks for the rich are "entitlement" programs. They're not entitlements if you paid for them all your life. I guess if you can steal from old people you're a good conservative.
1
Trump is now the "Magnificent King of Debt". Conservatives, with emphasis on the first syllable con, pontificate about spending. In reality, they are worse than the democrats. Trump, who apparently is charging the RNC up the wazoo, knows nothing but using other peoples money to take care of him, himself, and maybe his kids. When the Republicans are "noticeably silent" or they are raiding restricted hearings, you know they are guilty. Why do people vote Republican? You got me, I think they like the pain.
1
In the lead photograph the sign reading “$top the $pending” should actually read, stop the spending on other people, and the sign reading “Take your hands out of my pockets” should actually read tax everyone but me. Almost all people want more from government than they are willing to pay for. It’s really not all that complicated.
This issue alone points to the staggering hypocrisy of the Republican party. Hmmm...maybe this is also why supposed "policy wonk" and "wunderkind" Paul Ryan decided to slink off into the sunset to "spend more time with his family."
2
Republican silence in the face of a trillion dollar deficit exposes the emptiness of their professed principles. All along what they really cared about was tax breaks for their fat cat patrons. As Trump has revealed their moral shortcomings, GOP fiscal policy has demonstrated their ethical bankruptcy.
1
After electing Trump as their one and only WH leader, Republicans have compromised almost every principle they have stood for. And worse, they have been totally silenced by the destructive policies Trump has become famous for.
Protecting their 'skin' overrides any and all principles they have stood for.
1
The Republican Party has had no overall policy objectives for more than a century. Their only objective is to gain power. Then the fellow traveler money men go to work behind the scenes while the nutters hold forth at political revivals on whatever deranged issue they favor. Most of the time the American people eat it up. So it will go until a crash. There will be a crash. A really really loud crash. A well deserved crash.
1
"Republicans’ abdication of fiscal conservatism leaves Americans with no responsible party" is an attempt to justify GOP hypocrisy. Mr Klein flatters the GOP by inferring that even at their worst they are somehow only equally bad to Democrats. Incredible twisted thinking.
Apparently the Republicans are our only salvation even though for decades their actions have been clearly designed to benefit only their very rich supporters.
1
The concept of conservatism, as advanced by the Republican Party over the past 60 years, has become meaningless, except to the extent it is regarded as a synonym for hypocrisy.
3
As amazing as it may seem, each and every republican administration has put us into greater debt while ignoring our national infrastructure.
Reagan said, "The greatest mistake I ever made is to borrow the USA into a deficit." Reagan and his 'conservative" republicans made the USA into the largest debtor nation in history.
Then there was Dubya, who illegally threw us into two unfunded wars, costing us over a trillion dollars.
And now President Donald Dennison Me, who single handedly took Obama's debt-reduction policies and economic safe-guards and flushed them down his golden toilet.
And the 'conservative' republican base loves these guys. They may believe in 'trickle down' but the rest of the world laughs s they drown in poverty and lost jobs. Go figure.
3
I got through the entire article without seeing a single mention of "Republican hypocrisy". For that kind of honesty I'm afraid one will have to look elsewhere on the Op-Ed page (hint: Krugman).
Let's be clear: conservatives who voted for the master of bankruptcy are the existential threat to conservatism.
Where did people ever get the idea that Republicans cared about the country or the American people??
I can’t think of anything that they have done that wasn’t just meant to con the American people for personal gain.
The cons keep getting bigger all the time.
2
conservatism, at least since the 1960s, is NOT built on the idea of less gov't - that is just for the rubes
conservatism is built on the idea of lowering taxes on the rich, and nothing else
further, since the 1960s, conservatism has enthusiastically enlisted racism to help pass this agenda
1
It's useful to point out here that the same skeptics who
argue that persistently low interest rates and consistent demand for domestic bonds in the past decade of rising debt have disproved old economic assumptions and have instead shown that extraordinarily high levels of federal debt do not matter
are also unwilling to accept the science that underlies the warnings of runaway global warming.
In both cases there is an ideological resistance to prudent
policy based upon well understood principles of economics or physics. Instead there is a lemmings over the cliff mindset that justifies dangerous and irresponsible behavior for the sake of personal gratification or corporate profit, without
concern for any price to be paid in the future.
This gambling on unproved pseudo theories of denialism is simply self destructive lunacy that we, as a society,
seem incapable or unwilling to stop.
As a result, it's not going to end well because it cannot end
well.
The author refers to conservative republicans, which is astonishing since he must be aware that such republicans no longer exist except as some type of doddering appendage of the trumpican party.
It is futile to try and appeal for help from those who have lacked both backbone and moral courage to defend what they supposedly believe in and stand up consistently and firmly against the nativist and racialist ignorant hordes still rallying around their dear leader.
Take ryan as prime example 1.
One way to make "government the problem" is to underfund it and then blame it for "failing". The deficit spending is not a bug of the conservatives who want to shred government services... it's a feature
Its not conservatism which will be crushed by the debt.
It will be any opportunity for spending needed to advance the strategic goals of the country.
If you ask me republicans have a magical formula . Keep saying how Democrats are the big spenders, all the while spending even more when they are in power, think wars fought on a credit card (Bush) and tax cuts without spending cuts(Trump). Suddenly, when Democrats win an election all they can talk about is cutting spending. Even with “great recessions”!
The reason republicans love Trump so much is because Trump gets a “10” in badmouthing Democrats.
I for one will never vote for a single republican, local or national. I never used to feel that way. The GOP has lost their way!
5
Increasing the deficit was part of the plan right?
Reduce taxes on the most affluent/wealthy.
That decreases revenue to fund the government.
Claim insufficient money for programs.
Cut government programs.
Reducing the administrative and regulatory functions of government is the goal of the GOP. Then they can turn everything into a profit making enterprise.
You know like private prisons. People make money from incarcerating their fellow citizens instead of it being a function of government by and for the people.
Government has it's own professional and effective model. It may share some aspects with business practices but it should be distinct. The impeachment inquiry has given us some very clear examples of the difference in competence of career and political appointees.
Government is not the dirty word the GOP would have us all believe.
3
@DEBORAH
It's not just the GOP that wants to turn everything into a profit making enterprise. Plenty of Democrats think it's a good idea too.
@Taykadip
Would you please provide some examples of Democratic legislators, office holders, cabinet members who are advocates for privatizing government into profit making enterprises.
1
I disagree with the author's premise. Republicans for years acted as tax collectors for the welfare state working with Democrats to increase taxes to reduce the deficit. After decades of spending increasing faster than revenues, they junked that failed policy. Now if the Democrats want more spending, they and they alone must work to convince Americans that their spending programs justify higher taxes.
At some point the government debt will create problems such as runaway inflation and politicians will have to face reality - the welfare state is unsustainable.
@J. Waddell
Increasing debt puts pressure on credit markets. Increased pressure on credit markets creates higher interest rates. Higher interest rates create recessions.
Inflation is when government prints money in excess of demand.
Oh, and what if republicans propose less revenue (tax cuts) but promise to keep all the programs they fund (borrowing to keep them going)or to vastly increase military spending, or starting wars, without proposing any way to pay for them? Do the republicans need to justify that?
Dems tax and spend. Republicans spend and don’t tax. That is the difference.
1
Interesting how all the comments suggest that Democratic presidents balance the budgets and Republican presidents expand the deficits. To follow that logic, then all of the economic success of the past 3 years was due to Trump and not Obama. That is of course not true. The economy has blossomed because of Obama's actions and Trump just showed up at the right time. It is the same for all recent Democratic presidents; they followed an expansion of the economy that was started by the previous Republican presidents. If one is going to give credit to the occupant of the White House whenever the economy is booming, then to be consistent one has to sing Trump's praises as we've never had lower unemployment or higher stock values than we do now.
You don’t seem to know thatt all repub “expansions” were fueled by massive deficit spending. Reagan himself wrote a $trillion in hot checks.
@Joe Rock bottom But isn't that what turned the economy around and, according to Dems logic, led to a successful economy during their administration?
Interesting to observe that Republicans and Democrats demonstrate similar behavior when they sweep the deficit numbers out of sight.
They and we, the people who elect our representatives, share responsibility in tolerating fiscal irresponsibility. The more debt that accumulates the fewer options our nation will have. As compared to other nations, the USA descends financially and socially (thanks to Trumpster).
I suspect China is only too willing to assist in purchasing US Treasure debt.... making the USA in debt to the greatest threat to freedom and individual liberty.
1
The positions of this column seem to make sense within the logic of their own constraints, as far as it goes. But it shows its true colors and bias when it tosses in that one little line towards the end about old people with their Social Security and Medicare, as if that's the undue burden of government on the people, and the cause of the runaway deficits. Separate your strands of argument. In an article about the Republican party, you can't just sneak in the old entitlements argument escape clause.
2
The core contradiction here is that you can indeed have an America First policy, but it makes no sense when you also feel you MUST protect The National Security State. If you do your options are either ballooning deficits or cruelty inflicted on your own people by forcing them to pay for programs that do not benefit them while reducing programs that do.
Yet, somehow, our alleged political parties have manufactured divisions that do not naturally exist. So, like the flagellates of the Middle Ages, many Americans – especially those from rural areas – line up to whip themselves believing that's the only answer to the plague. Like Europe during the Black Death, our citizens blame their afflictions on sin. In this case, the sinners are the other party.
Our primary national security challenges cannot be addressed by tanks, aircraft carriers, advanced fighter aircraft, a massive standing army, and over 70 military bases around the world.
How do we pay for universal health care? Advanced education? Environmental regulation? A guaranteed dignified retirement? Protections for labor? Like all other civilized nations on earth: with a sane military budget. Yet not a soul running for president says one word about The National Security State that, as the late Gore Vidal pointed out as it was happening, replaced our republic seventy years ago.
5
Balanced* budgets force politicians to make hard choices and prevent them handing out sufficient Halloween candy to various groups to essentially buy reelection with debt their grandkids will be paying off.
*Perhaps the correct line to draw relates GDP to national debt somehow instead of a nominally balanced budget. The important feature is that there is bipartisan agreement on a metric, that metric results in sustainable spending levels and there is committment to keep to it no matter which party is in power.
There are times to violate such a goal - war, natural disaster, recession - but "avoiding hard choices" is not sufficient justification.
There are valid economic arguments for near-perpetual deficit spending, but these ignore the severe political and social consequences. When everyone thinks we can tax only the 1% or borrow from the grandkids who will borrow from their grandkids, there will be far less concern for public funds and accountability. This can have a widespread corrosive effect on both the public and private sectors.
Philip Klein makes some good points in this article, but he seems confused about two major issues.
First, there have been NO Republican fiscal conservatives in the leadership of either the executive branch or the Congress since at least 1981. Some, like Reagan and Ryan, would trot out some slogans that seemed fiscally conservative, especially when Democrats held the Presidency, but they were lying. They devoted their efforts to increasing the deficit and the debt.
Second, Klein should adopt Krugman's understanding of the economics of this situation. Krugman has a history of being right on this matter. Klein has a history of playing Chicken Little, claiming immediate doom was looming throughout the Obama administration. The facts prefer Krugman's models.
4
Fiscal conservatism involves not running deficits and actually running a surplus to pay down the enormous debt. That can be accomplished by raising tax revenue, decreasing spending, or a combination of the two.
"Small-government conservatism" is about anti-regulation, among other things.
The following is a recent case in point about what happens in the absence of regulations:
"The [Oct. 17, 2019] denial of a request for rehearing of en banc by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal confirmed a three-judge panel decision that police officers could not be held liable for stealing assets subject to a search warrant as long as the theft occurred prior to 2017....
'The panel held that at the time of the incident, there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or 14th Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant."
The above excerpt is from an article by Carter Stoddard titled "En banc denial leaves police theft immunity in place" that was published in the October 18, 2019 edition of the Los Angeles Daily Journal.
Depending upon whether you are the predator or the victim of the predator, the same law can either be perceived as a "regulation" or a "protection." When people dislike regulations, I always look at who the regulations are intended to protect because predators don't like that which interferes with their ability to prey upon others.
4
The rich need to be taxed at 60%+ and a wealth tax imposed in the estate tax to basically stop the transfer to successive generations. The rich are destroying democracy.
18
If every American paid his fair share of taxes, it would go a long way toward balancing the budget. Unfortunately, the ultra-rich buy themselves legislators at every level of government to ensure that they can enjoy unlimited wealth without suffering the annoyance of taxes. Of course, every dollar they avoid paying is either a dollar that the rest of us have to pay, or an excuse to cut programs that assist regular working Americans. As for entitlements, yes, I feel that my paying Social Security taxes for over 45 years entitles me to Social Security now, in my retirement.
18
The GOP only know once dance step. It's called the GOP two step, and it never varies. Step one: cut taxes so the rich get richer. Step two: cut benefits to make up for the short fall. They will blame the shortfall on our "entitlements" rather than on the huge, whopping tax cut they just gave themselves and the donor class. The GOP have wanted to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security for a very long time. Their tax cut shortfall will finally give them something they've always wanted; an excuse to destroy the social safety net for good.
10
@wildwest (GOP; "guardians of plutocracy")
1
Among the consequences of this risky fiscal course is listed the most likely eventuality: severe cuts in spending, most likely to be drastic reduction of the social safety net, already thinner than those of other developed nations. This is part of the long game conservatives are playing, making it impossible to adequately finance and thus kill popular programs like Social Security and Medicare which their base would oppose otherwise. Conservatives have not abandoned their agenda, just gone about it in another way.
6
@Dianne Karls
"another way": Shock Doctrine-Rise of Disaster Capitalism
There is no threat to conservatism, because conservatism died long ago. Republicans have been ballooning the deficit and expanding government since Reagan — they just claimed they weren’t. And now they no longer act like they care.
12
Mr. Klein might be more conservative than me, but it is possible to fear deficit spending regardless of political affiliation. I disagreed with Mr. Krugman's (what me worry?) essay earlier today but I agree with Mr. Klein now. There will be a reckoning, no doubt about it, and it will be when rates climb higher. We sail along now thinking that deficits don't matter, simply because interest rates are at historic lows and the actual interest paid annually (approx 500 billion), gets swallowed up as a line item in the budget and no one notices. But when the dollar amount of annual interest payments begin to rival yearly military spending, we might want to pause. Americans need to notice that soon we can have cradle to grave health care for the amount we continue to spend in debt charges. Deficits are not ethereal, they do matter, unless of course our country does not intend to pay off it's debt. But we do, don't we?
1
"In contrast, the current debt is not from a one-off event, such as a major war or economic downturn, but from the combination of rising health care costs and an increase in the retirement-age population that is driving up spending on Medicare and Social Security. "
This simplistic statement places all the blame on entitlement programs while ignoring the changes in taxes. Taxes paid by corporations plunged 31% in FY2018, and their share is down significantly over the few decades. Tax cuts in flush times are a fool's errand. The money should be reinvested in our infrastructure and educating the next generation of workers.
Tax policy made by politicians is inherently short-sighted, despite the best efforts of economists to get them to think beyond the next election.
6
Today's debt is yugely from the incompetence of the three stooges who lowered taxes on the rich and bungled two wars beyond belief; one of which was criminal and unnecessary. Trump is adding to it. Without the trillions poured down the drain in Afghanistan and Iraq, the tax cuts for people who don't need them, and the unnecessary increases in military spending; health care quality could be increased to higher than 35th in the world, education could be improved and cost less, etc. etc.
There's lots of money. It is simply being squandered.
2
@Ken L - Not only the change in taxes, but also the increases in military spending. But sure, the GOP prefers to blame all the debt on retired workers and poor people.
3
@Ken L
Not ALL are short - sighted. William K Black, and Michael Hudson have whistle-blown parallel an entirely other "Klein" (Naomi: "Shock Doctrine-Rise of Disaster Capitalism"). However, mainstream media provides America no detail at all regarding 2007 Wall $treet fraud$, largest theft in world - human history. Meanwhile GOP goes about further deregulation of Wall $treet "derivatives"
This is a global confidence game that works for the US and the world as long as the US is still viewed as the least corrupt marketplace and most likely NOT to ever default on its obligations.
The crowding out effect that macro economists always rail against when talking deficits is counteracted by a global balance sheet flooded with dollars from all sides.
If there was another major global currency in better long term shape than the dollar we WOULD be in trouble. But that hasn’t happened and likely won’t happen unless the rest of the world starts hiking rates and balancing budgets and we don’t.
2
I'm a Democrat but I agree totally. Unless you are an MMT nut there is a limit to how much debt you can create without creating a huge debt service problem and the need for cuts in major programs. Ask Argentina and Venezuela. The deficit at a time of full employment and reasonable growth rates is running at around 5% of GDP which is criminally irresponsible.
1
@John
Yes; ask Argentina, and CHILE', Sept. 11, 1973:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3B5qt6gsxY
You'd have to ignore almost 40 years of political history to believe in a conservatives ideology based on balancing the budget rather than cutting taxes. Literally, this is something that they say about themselves without ever abiding by it when they get power.
5
@Libaryan
Yes! Why does anyone believe the myth about Republican "fiscal responsibility"? I don't remember the Nixon years, but their "fiscal hypocrisy" dates back at least to Reagan.
Obama guided us out of the 2008 GFC, Clinton paid off Reagan/Bush's debt. Go back far enough and Roosevelt led the recovery from the Republican-induced Great Depression. The Democratic Party - cleaning up Republican fiscal messes for 90 years!
It IS responsible to spend money when and where it needs to be spent, and irresponsible not to, Mr Klein.
"With leading Democratic presidential candidates proposing tens of trillions of dollars of new federal spending, Republicans’ abdication of fiscal conservatism leaves Americans with no responsible party."
So-called fiscal conservatism is not the same as responsible governance. The question isn't how much spending, but for what and how it is financed. Will Mr Klein also talk of irresponsible tax cuts or irresponsible tax avoidance? Corporations have responsibilities, too.
8
"CONSERVATISM" WAS JUST A CONVENIENT TALKING POINT
We must stop pretending that policy issues have become anything more than expedient labels in the zero-sum Republican vs Democratic demolition derby.
To get non-partisan policy solutions to our nation's problems, we need to end that demolition derby. A necessary prerequisite is getting independent, more centrist voters to be more active in selecting our candidates in primary elections and selecting the our legislators and President/Vice President in the general elections.
Currently, effectively "closed" primaries keep anyone not an ideologue of the left or right out of contention.
Opening primaries to non-party-registered independent voters -- a growing and now the largest segment of the electorate -- and using Ranked Choice Voting in general elections are the best ways to get policy ahead of partisanship in our elections.
Trump's tax cuts, silence on unlimited money in politics, and silence on climate change are not merely an existential threat to "conservatism" (if there still is such an animal), but an existential threat to democracy and life itself. NY Times' Paul Krugman is tracking well the economic folly of Trump's policies. And once we factor in the hidden cost of climate change, they are catastrophic. The world that we see around us is mortgaged on the future of our children and the grandchildren. Trump is nothing more than the freedom and liberty of multinational corporations to plunder without interference from governmental oversight for the sake of citizens and the planet.
7
I'm amazed at some of these comments.
Yes, Republicans have exposed themselves as hypocrites when it comes to deficit spending. Yes, some of the Republican concern with deficit spending was obviously motivated by racism/classism. Yes, Republicans have always had a blind spot for military spending. Yes, a lot of the rhetoric around fiscal conservatism has always been motivated by unpleasent ideologies. That can ALL be true.
None of that contradicts the idea that large, persistent deficits are very dangerous. The fact that people (e.g. Krugman) are arguing that interests rates are currently low should alarm us, not reassure us. The government is financed by a large amount of short-term debt. If interest rates on U.S. treasuries suddenly rise, it won't just be new debt that suddenly becomes more expensive. The interest on every single dollar we've ever borrowed could get vastly more expensive, possibly swamping the budget. Crises build slowly, but spiral out of control very quickly.
I don't think it's a wise to ignore the threat of deficits just because the people who have historically supported fiscal restraint happen to be bad people. That doesn't make the threat less real; it just makes it easier to ignore.
4
The problem is not just one of a few bad apples but rather years of hypocrisy or bad faith--Republicans using the deficit as a political cover to cut programs they don't approve of but cannot bring themselves to publicly oppose--has resulted in the Republicans being discredited on fiscal matters.
The number of people who truly care about the deficit and are intellectually honest about what it would actually to resolve is much smaller than the number of charlatans who claim to care about the deficit but are merely using the deficit to push own their own agenda.
As consequence, many people are suspicious when they hear someone claiming to be concerned about the deficit and are not inclined to take the issue seriously.
It's somewhat ironic that the "party of fiscal responsibility" has been anything but responsible. Obama and Clinton took spiraling deficits from GOP presidents and left with budget surpluses. The GOP has completely sold itself out and we are watching it fall apart more and more every day.
14
It's mistaken to say there is no fiscally responsible party. For generations the Democratic Party has been the party of fiscal responsibility, running deficits when the economy is slowing (or in crisis like after the Republican crash) and reducing deficits when the economy is growing, as Obama was doing and as Clinton did before him; Clinton was in fact running surpluses.
For a generations now, the Republican Party has been irresponsible on every issue, not just economic issues. Their intellectual dishonesty is a disgrace. We should all stop listening.
42
My late father was what I would call a "true" conservative. Early on, he was involved with starting the Conservative Party in New York State. To him, it was all about the financial overreach so common in government.
As the years go on, however, I've come to believe that most conservatives were sold a bill of goods. They were scammed by the GOP who talked about fiscal responsibility, all the while doing nothing about it. It became a parlor trick; scream to high heaven about the Democrats when they were in office and then get mute on the subject once the inevitable flip happened.
Talking about debt and deficits was nothing more or less than a marketing scheme -- and it still is.
17
Nothing new here. We haven't had a balanced budget under a Republican president since Eisenhower. LBJ and Clinton left office with budgets in balance. Obama reduced the annual deficits despite the Global Financial Crisis. Ronald Reagan quadrupled the national debt. Trump is simply following the Republican playbook: cut taxes to benefit the wealthy. Let everyone else struggle.
77
"But when reality sets in and the bill for decades of fiscal recklessness comes due, conservatives will regret that they squandered so much time debating the latest botched news story or Twitter controversy rather than doing anything to address the federal debt."
Won't they just blame the democrats and propose a new round of tax cuts, as they always do?
18
Republican concern has rarely been about the deficit but rather about using the deficit as political cover to eliminate programs they don't approve of but cannot bring themselves to publicly admit they are opposed to.
21
Mr. Klein states, "the current debt is not from a one-off event, such as a major war or economic downturn, but from the combination of rising health care costs and an increase in the retirement-age population that is driving up spending on Medicare and Social Security."
I beg to differ. The current debt is not a function of out of control spending, but out of control tax cutting for businesses and wealthy individuals. We would have a balanced budget had we simply held to the 1960's tax tables and allowed ourselves the dignity to pay our bills on time. Instead, we have cut taxes and built enough loopholes that most big corporations pay nothing at all. It is the same for very wealthy individuals. As far as I know, our own President and his wealthy family pay nothing in Federal income taxes. Dead beats, all.
Tell me why we haven't raised the cap on social security tax payments? Why are we committed to giving tax breaks to fossil fuel energy companies? Why does Amazon pay no federal income tax?
This is less about spending and more about tax cutting.
48
If the Philip Klein is worried about deficit spending discrediting conservatism, he is a bit late to the game.
The intellectual bankruptcy of the Republic Party on deficits did not begin with President Trump. Prior to Trump, there was Congressman Paul Ryan who proposed budgets that were not grounded in reality. You can certainly go back farther than that to find examples of Republicans hypocrisy on deficit spending.
15
Mr. Trump has pushed for increased military spending and has opposed any serious reforms to entitlements.
Refusing [at least so far] to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits is about the only positive thing Trump has done.
Neither Social Security not Medicare are part of the budget.
Each program is paid for by its own payroll tax.
Each program has a positive balance in its respective trust fund.
That means to date neither program has contributed one cent to the debt.
Any long range problems for SS can easily be met by raising the cap on income subject to SS payroll tax.
What conservatives want to do is to steal SS and M payroll tax dollars and use that money to pay for deficits caused by the GOP tax cuts for the rich.
19
I give the Times editors credit for publishing this essay on the same day as Paul Krugman's thoughts about the debt. It feels like an attempt to make these points equivalent, but they are not. Dr. Krugman backs his thoughts up with data while Mr. Klein makes statements that basically blame his peers for making things worse and claiming that, in doing so, they are undermining their sole responsible position. The truth seems to be that Republicans only care about debt when Democrats are in charge. They also only think that debt increases due to entitlements, not military spending. All spending adds to the debt. Control of spending will help control the debt. Cutting taxes will increase the debt. Trickle down economics has never worked and never will. Until any conservative commentator discusses these issues in speaking about debt, they have no credibility. Any attempt to sound serious is just smoke and mirrors. While I do give credit to the Times for publishing this piece, I am concerned that it lends legitimacy to a view that is without merit. It's like having someone write an opinion piece about why the Earth is flat when there is no evidence to support that position.
25
It's a long time since most conservatives have actually been conservative.
19
Certainly, R’s have been hypocritical for years about deficits. What we have to remember is that it was always a scam. They didn’t truly have an issue with deficits, as has been proven recently by their willingness to blow past them.
No, what bothered them was that the outlays that contributed to the deficits were going to people they disapproved of. These “takers” as they were notably called in one campaign, were seen as leeches who would destroy the moral fabric of America. That they were widely, but unspokenly, seen as dark skinned merely reinforced the disgust that R candidates were able to use to appeal to their “conservative,” white, supporters.
This fear of losing one’s place in society is now labeled derogatorily as “white privilege,” but it’s the same fear. That “white” as a classification based on skin color is debunked by scientists as an undefinable distinction hasn’t caused it lose it’s power. Those who perceived that they benefited from any such privilege are loathe to lose it, whether they are likely to or not.
Their current desire to prop up an orange-hued despot-in-waiting, only magnifies the hypocrisy.
17
@Marshall Doris Still believe the underlying motivation of many of our Republican politicians and their supporters is a deep fear of demographics. Those demographics are immutable over time. But, we are in truth a melting pot. Always have been. Assimilation has taken place and will continue to do so. It works.
1
@Marshall Doris
...specifically, Jude Wanniski - "2 Santa Clause" economics..
1
Republicans will, no doubt, fix this problem by selling another tax cut, one that will benefit only billionaires and Wall Street, but will sell it as needed to “really speed up the trickle down”.
And, no doubt, the American people will fall for it once again.
Making corruption great again.
21
Here’s a one word explanation : Hypocrisy.
Period.
16
The reality of Republican hypocrisy on everything points out the one motivating factor behind their party and the Tea Party movement: racism. When you try to explain them, finding there is really no moral or philosophical basis for the party, it all goes back to where they always land: racism. We need to stop trying to find other reasons. They will use this deficit to do what they want most of all to do: crush people of color in any way possible. Mark my words.
13
There’s always so much howling about Democrats wanting to borrow/tax and spend, but Republicans want to borrow/gut the social safety net and give it all away to rich people who will hoard it.
GOP tax cuts never pay for themselves, and the money never trickles down.
Programs that benefit working class people result in a more robust economy because these people have little choice but to spend any windfall.
“Conservative fiscal responsibility” is an oxymoron.
44
This is nice, but I don't think 3 percent of the population cares about deficits. Run a "deficit” candidate and see what happens.
4
Framing this as a debate about the long-term risks of "fiscal responsibility" is misleading. Republicans run massive debts to entrench a permanent ruling class who benefit from society but pay nothing in taxes. They also redistribute wealth to industry and subsidize investors (stock buybacks). While Democrats may be proposing "trillions" in "new spending", it has been repeatedly demonstrated that spending on early childhood education and healthcare, infrastructure, and drug treatment, actually are investments in the future, and pay for themselves. Running deficits is OK if what is spent today has positive impacts in the future, which is where Democrats stand. Running deficits to free the wealthy from their tax burdens, and to subsidize polluting industries, and reward those fortunate enough to have capital gains, while our infrastructure crumbles is not OK.
34
@james doohan Bingo - james -- you nailed it.
1
One of the reasons our economy is doing as well as it is is the fiscal stimulus of the current budget deficit. The government is taking money from wealthy individuals and corporations, money that would otherwise be used to run up stock and real estate prices or perhaps squirreled away is tax havens, and spending that money on salaries and goods. The government debt is owed mostly to Americans and is not a threat to future generations because it’s owed to future generations. An economy of full employment with large government fiscal deficits is much superior to an economy with low deficits but high unemployment, business failures and other attributes of a weak economy. As to extrapolating current trends to the future, that has never been a productive exercise.
@lester ostroy said: "The government is taking money from wealthy individuals and corporations, money that would otherwise be used to run up stock and real estate prices or perhaps squirreled away is tax havens, and spending that money on salaries and goods. "
This is exactly the opposite of what's happening.
In fact, the government is limiting what is taken from "wealthy individuals and corporations" while happily spending more and more on things that are of limited long-term value.
8
@lester ostroy
Just curious, is this sarcastic?
"The government is taking money from wealthy individuals and corporations, money that would otherwise be used to run up stock and real estate prices or perhaps squirreled away is tax havens"
- In 2014/2015, corporate tax revenues were $332B each year, on average. By 2018, with the corporate tax rate cut, it was $205B. In 2019, it's forecast to be $228B. I don't see the government taking money from corporations, I see them giving it back.
- Remind me again where the Dow and S&P are right now? That doesn't have anything to do with corporate stock buybacks does it?
- Have you been paying attention to real estate prices in greater LA, by any chance? No shortage of wealthy people snapping up West Coast real estate.
2
@Andrew Low interest rates on home loans are good. But, they immediately transfer into increased asking prices for homes. Key consideration has always been -- the monthly payment!!
“With leading Democratic presidential candidates proposing tens of trillions of dollars of new federal spending, Republicans’ abdication of fiscal conservatism leaves Americans with no responsible party.”
Not to worry, the Democratic President will propose big (progressive) tax increases to move toward a balanced budget. And cut military spending.
7
The author cannot seriously be this credulous. After everything we've seen it seems crazy to suggest with a straight face that GOP voters care much at all about debt and deficits. This just seems so willfully blind to the realities in front of our eyes. It is also the distilled essence of the myths that "conservatives elites" have told themselves and everyone who'd listen about "conservatism" for years despite all the serious sociological work showing that the "conservatives" were nothing like their portrayal by writers such as this author.
6
"In contrast, the current debt is not from a one-off event, such as a major war or economic downturn, but from the combination of rising health care costs and an increase in the retirement-age population that is driving up spending on Medicare and Social Security. "
I'm always amused when I see comments like this from conservative pundits that like to claim that the Right owns the fiscal responsibility mantle, yet they somehow can't (won't?) understand how a basic income statement works. Your bottom line deficit is the combination of revenue AND expenses; simply blaming this on spending is disingenuous.
When there's an honest interest in discussing the harms caused by "Starve the Beast", let me know and we'll have a heart to heart. Until than, this is juts blowing smoke.
5
@Andrew Most of the debt is, indeed, from, or principally from one major event: The Trump tax cut.
8
"With leading Democratic presidential candidates proposing tens of trillions of dollars of new federal spending, Republicans’ abdication of fiscal conservatism leaves Americans with no responsible party."
Wrong, Mr. Klein.
Democrats have always been more fiscally responsible than Republicans ever since St Ronnie sold tax-cut snake oil nonsense to the public in 1980.
Bill Clinton balanced the budget after Reagan and Bush Sr. surfed Arthur Laffer's trickle-down fraudonomics that blew up the deficit.
Then Bush-Cheney blew up the deficit with more 1% Welfare Tax Cuts and the Iraq War on a credit card before they blew up the economy in 2008 which continued to collapse federal revenues until 2012 thanks to the Bush-Cheney Depression.
Obama raised taxes and the deficit was shrinking in his second term and America's budget was on a manageable path until Trump and the GOP once again decided to blow up the deficit so millionaires and billionaires could get a free ride since they fundamentally reject the concept of paying for a decent civilization.
There simply are no serious adults in the Republican Party and there haven't been for a long time.
'Conservativism' is extinct in America.
The 2019 Republican party is nothing but a radical, regressive, Randian, Reverse Robin Hood fringe party that manages to illegitimately hang onto power through carefully orchestrated electoral theft and subversion of democracy.
Fortunately, responsible Democrats are on the way to help.
Nov 3 2020
959
@Socrates
Please: there's nothing "fiscally responsible" about cutting government spending in the face of inadequate demand.
The longer so-called liberals cling to this rotten Reaganism, the longer the party will be saddled with the orthodoxy which gives over the country to Republicans.
One of Obama's more shameful moments came when he compared the family budget to the national one, as an argument for cutting spending. This, in the midst of a painfully slow recovery, and after he had bailed out the banks (no worries about belt-tightening there, were there?).
Run on deficit reduction, and you'll lose every time. And you'll deserve to lose.
10
@Socrates , Your comment is right on the money, as usual. Thanks for commenting.
74
@Socrates you are 1000% correct.
It's annoying how true and obvious this is yet the reality refuses to be acknowledged.
44
It's not Trump's deficit. It is the GOP's deficit. The GOP has never ever been fiscally responsible, so stop with that propaganda. The GOP has always defended the wealthy and the corporations and beaten down the people. It makes no difference if a third of the country is made up of masochists who enjoy being serfs and vote republican. Facts are facts and the fact is that the GOP has always blown up the deficit. Every time they get a chance. And it's the same old scam every time. They insert small temporary cuts for the middle class and give huge lavish permanent cuts to corporations and the wealthy.
4
Trump has merely revealed the essence of conservatism. All they ever cared about was controlling peoples’ sex lives, cutting taxes until government did not function, and maintaining white privilege. This is what Trump’s pact with the Evangelicals reflects.
The only way to achieve these goals is through an authoritarian state that over funds its military and enforces minority ethics on the majority.
I wish we had true conservatives: people who wanted to conserve liberal democracy, the post world war 2 order, and the environment—the truly sacred element in all our lives.
But all conservatives want is the right to be rude, violent, and pollute, as though that makes them free.
7
The usual hypocritical craven conservative bunk. So scared their plutocrat owners and corporate masters might actually have to pay taxes! Disgusting. These huge deficits were all created by Republicans: Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, Trump - and their drummed up wars and other programs (Medicare Part D) Republican mal-administrations put on the national credit card. Clinton left a trillion dollar surplus as far as the eye could see that war criminal George W. Bush promptly squandered. Obama actually came close to balanced budgets (except when having to recover from the Republican economic debacle) and reduced the debt, Trump and his criminal cronies promptly took care of that!
Republicans have NO claim, none whatsoever, to being the party of fiscal responsibility. And removing them from the government they so hate - at every level from dogcatcher to the White House - is the most important prerequisite to restoring fiscal sanity and saving our democracy from these crypto-fascist crooks.
NO REPUBLICANS IN 2020! NONE! NOT ONE!
12
@Ignatz Farquad Radical - but wrong. We must strive for a truly functioning two party system - that was a critical strong point of our Democracy until Mitch and crew took the reins. Republicans are now way off message. Time to move them to the sidelines so that they can clean their house and move back into the loyal opposition position. Cleaning their house demands eliminating people like Nunes and McCarthy. Disband the Club for Growth, dump the Tea Party types. Mitch clearly the genesis of our chaotic past 12 plus years. Trump - dead meat. Barr to be retired. Ditch Mitch. Challenges abound, but we will recover from this chaotic mess.
The reason, Phil, is that you guys never really cared about debts and deficits, and don’t now. It’s the social issues you want, starting with keeping rich white guys in charge.
6
Its funny to watch a conservative editor come to grips with reality. I assume philip klein was one of the conservative intelligentsia who thought people really cared about the deficit. One of these libertarians who really believed his austerity politics had grass roots support.
Here's an update for ya Phil: Grass roots republicans don't hate spending on welfare programs. They only really care about who is receiving the benefits.
Many of the people who rail against the welfare system do so because they already create their own support network through a local organization. For example, the same people who hate giving money to the government are the same people who have no problem giving tithes to their local church. Why? Because when these people give on a local scale, when they localize their welfare, they feel more secure about the concept that those who receive it, deserve it.
Thus, when you ask yourself why no one seems to care about the deficit, you come to a radical, yet obvious conclusion. Republicans, tea partiers, and the like have never cared about the budget. They never cared about spending money on helping people. They've cared because of a racist lie that the government uses their hard earned white dollars to support black and brown incompetence.
Im sure you don't fully grasp how racism works in America, but maybe this can be a useful learning experience. It was never about the debt. It was always about the perception of who benefited from it.
15
As I see if everyone wants from the government. Someone is going to have to tell people that someone must pay.
Conservative up with your bootstraps people should know nothing is free.
And the only people who can pay are those with money. No more good old days when the aristocracy didn’t pay.
Hello! Excuse me! This isn’t debt Trump ran up all by himself. He had the help of choir boy Paul Ryan and Moscow Mitch. The Republican Party could have stopped this dead in its tracks. They chose not to because conservatives only care about the debt when Democrats are in charge and actually trying to help the middle or lower classes. When debt stuffs the pockets of the wealthy and business, they’re all in. Their re-election coffers are well endowed and they’re fat and happy
7
Republicans are only pious about fiscal prudence when they're out of power. Reagan, W, and now Trump all turned on the spigots and gushed out red ink across the country. When they're in power, you barely hear a peep from so-called conservatives about government spending. The logical conclusion: They don't care about fiscal prudence and they are not fiscally prudent. They just want power, and they'll say anything they think will resonate to get it. Doesn't matter what Dems want or how rich we are as a country, the GOP will say we can't afford it, while lining up to waste billions and trillions on ill-conceived ground wars, or a ridiculous wall, or a military buildup we don't need. Schools? Health? Infrastructure? The GOP will never do it. Lesson for Dems: When you're in power, spend at will. When Republicans complain, call them out specifically for their hypocrisy, and keep going.
4
While much can be blamed on Mr. Trump, these aren't "Trump's Deficits." He's agnostic on fiscal policy and merely does what "Trump's people" - the guys formerly known as Republicans - want in exchange for giving him power in matters he does care about.
3
Klein glosses over the assertion that Democrat candidates are proposing "trillions in new spending". Spending for social welfare, from early childhood education to infrastructure to healthcare, have been shown to be investments. It is not really reasonable to say shifting healthcare costs from, for example, an employer to an individual through taxes, really increases spending. It just makes for transparency. Saying, "Deficits don't matter" is probably correct if debt is used to invest in the future. It does matter if it enriches the rich and burdens our children with not only debt, but crumbling infrastructure and poor health.
3
I keep having this uneasy feeling that behind Republicans’ willingness to let the deficit balloon is their desire to starve the government. One day I expect to wake up and find that the Republicans have decided that the huge deficit has driven them to slash the programs that benefit those in need.
5
The Republican concern about deficit spending has been phony since the Reagan tax bill in 1981. Tax cuts were never going to pay for themselves and it was known by anyone who knew anything about economics.
The Republican talking point is that deficits are bad when Democrats spend money, but not when Republicans cut taxes. They promise that tax cuts will be magical and allow all those existing programs to stay funded without requiring anyone to pay taxes.
There probably won’t be a fiscal crisis in the US under most projections of spending and taxation because we print the dollars necessary to allow investors to buy the bonds that are issued. Only if the economy and political system become demonstrably unstable will holders of dollars seek to trade them in for other currencies. Otherwise, there will always be enough investment funds available to fund the debt since both are in our own currency.
3
If we decide not to pay for healing our sick and enabling everyone (including those who have no savings or have lost or used theirs up) to survive after they can no longer earn their daily bread, the deficit is no longer a problem. It is difficult to sell such solutions when they are openly advocated for everyone and not just for shiftless minorities.
The fear of deficits, and never discussing the big picture, allows the promotion of policies that will have the supposedly unintended and officially unseen result of eliminating some of our losers. Fiscal restraint on social security means that some of those who are just managing to survive on it will die, but fiscal conservatives never never go there.
A majority of us are determined to heal our sick and keep our retirees alive until they die of natural causes. These are new problems for the human race, created by our progress in medicine and technology. How we solve them is a complex technical issue, and the role of fiscal conservatism is to make sure that it is not addressed as such.
The answer to our fiscal crisis is that we go bankrupt and start over or that we redesign our economy to not generate so much debt. Our creditors worry that the level of debt is unsustainable while engaging in making more of it and fighting any limits on it. For not facing this contradiction, they deserve to lose most of their money and their control.
2
“Despite Mr. Trump’s campaign boasts about wiping out the debt, as president he had adopted an instant-gratification mentality.”
Prior to “adopting” it in the White House, Mr. Trump had lived his entire decades long professional career in instant gratification mode, going from debt to debt, fraud to fraud, bankruptcy to bankruptcy. That the judgement of so many “conservatives” could allow them to vote for such a dangerously self-obsessed, grossly ignorant and incompetent candidate is an indictment of the entire movement.
335
@Marc
Trump helps the GOP Starve the Beast. They have stated they Want to run up debt so they can use it as an excuse to cut Soc Sec and Medicare.
9
@Franco51 Exactly. They've already started saying Soc Sec is 'a promise we can't keep,' even though we are by all measures in a New Gilded Age, with record breaking profits for corps and the hyper wealthy. Don't GOP politicians realize this is a country they also have to live in? What would happen if they were to accomplish their stated goals? How could they show their faces in their communities?
11
Wealthy right wing billionaires supported Trump despite his known ignorance and incompetence. Greed overcame common sense.
However, it is a serious error to confuse what is happening in the United States as a question of liberals vs. conservatives. It is fundamentally a matter of fighting to maintain respect for the rule of law under our Constitution. How can any remaining Republicans who have any sense of decency not realize what damage Trump is doing to their party? How can work overtime protecting Trump while everything they believe in as conservatives is trashed by Trump’s ignorance, massive lies and unending hatred ?
The Republican leadership has foisted off on the American people an ignorant disgraceful criminal who thinks the US government is just a part of his corrupt family businesses. Any patrtiotic American including conservatives will vote against Trump-serving Republicans in order to restore decency to our government. After a resounding defeat, perhaps a truly conservative Republican Party focused on fiscal conservatism can be rebuilt.
154
@Jefflz "How can any remaining Republicans who have any sense of decency..."
There ARE none. Zip, zilch, nada.
The Republican Party is anathema to a functioning democracy, which we will surely lose with them in charge.
15
@Jefflz Agreed. Any true fiscal conservative will have to support higher taxes on the biggest earners, including large corporations and individuals. You can't just cut spending without increasing revenue, otherwise you are just putting the burden on the most vulnerable while supporting the most powerful.
6
@Bob Woods A few decent Republicans come to mind, but they are silen - or are silenced.
I was thinking of George Will and Colin Powell.
My goodness, where to begin. The writer blames Trump for the deficit. Oh, I'm no Trump fan, by any means but this problem isn't from Trump. This problem is from the Republican Party. Trump simply enabled them to push through their voo doo economic tax cut for the wealthy.
The writer says: "The only time in American history when debt exceeded current levels was during World War II. But in that case, once the fighting stopped, the debt started to retreat."
Yes. And the debt retreated because the highest tax rate on the richest Americans was at 70%. Now the richest Americans pay less than the middle class.
All Republican "economists' need to do us all a favor and simply shut up and go away. They haven't got a clue.
11
Debt has long been a policy restraint used against progressives and an electoral strategy for republicans. Republicans own 3/4 of our national debt by potus and policy prescription and have broken the bank and the economy in the past twenty years, all the while blaming more progressive ideals and politicians for their madness in spending and policy.
4
Can we please get over the notion that government shouldn't do anything but organize the military?
It's basically nihilistic and it's a huge part of the reason our civic society is circling the drain.
9
Pardon my ignorance but when has the Republican party ever not been utter hypocrites when it comes to national debt? Can anyone name a Republican president under who's watch the debt decreased?
6
@joe Really, never. They know deep down that austerity brings recession.
1
This article is just the same rehash of the economic issues that every think tank has been publishing for decades. Young people are not having enough children the old people are sucking the economy dry etc etc.
Lumping democrats in the same category as the GOP is an unfair comparisons. The democrats want to help the citizens in this country and do not enjoy seeing seniors living on the streets because they can no longer afford there apartment that the rents have been hiked up to put them on the streets. Pension plans are non existent because the coal mines went out of business in West Virginia or Toys R Us went out of business , or they became ill and health care costs are out of control. No one cares about real Americans except Bernie , Warren who the NYT despise since the elite writers attending cocktail parties want to ensure that there place in society is secured.
The government, incompetent politicians created this scenario that we are living . It was the democrats who saved this country in 2008. the democrats who provided George W. Bush with the federal deficit under control and he in turn ran it into the ground.
Democrats have ideas on how to pull this country forward, the GOP and their love for CEO's and ensuring that corporations ie Amazon pay no taxes people who voted in the GOP have no one to blame but themselves, rest assured the GOP will cut all social services and ensure that Milken makes a great deal of money off the backs of the poor.
3
Abdication? “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.”
Fiscal responsibility has always been a canard with ‘conservatives.’
2
I'm curious why Mr. Klein did not list tax cuts for the wealthy as a source of our rising debt? This speaks of intellectual dishonesty, and therefore, untrustworthiness.
He might offer the rejoinder, now totally discredited, that tax cuts goose the economy. Unfortunately, the numbers do not support this fairy tale.
Looks like just another partisan shill.
22
Democrats, at least, spend money to help everyday Americans. Republicans spend money to line the pockets of the wealthy.
3
First, there is only one brand of Republican populism. That is the brand of Nixon's segregationist Southern strategy. The Tea Party populism, like Trump's populism, is nothing more than anti- the black Kenyan Muslim socialist usurper.
And fiscal conservatism as espoused by the Party of Trump is as openly hypocritical as that espoused by Ronald Reagan. It's not about spending at all. It's about tax cuts for the wealthy. Period. End of story.
3
@Kevin Brock
Right on!
Bobby
Cashiers, n c
While spending is a problem, the real issue is that Corporate America doesn't contribute enough. Apple pays just a 3% tax rate, Amazon pays nothing. Despite the fact that the US Navy keeps the sea lanes open so they can both move their goods from Asia to the US. If we are going to reduce the deficit, we need to start by asking Corporate America to start paying their fair share. We can also reduce expenditures by cutting off the red welfare states. Alabama takes in nearly $3 for every $1 they send to Washington, Mississippi is worse, Kentucky too. Let's cut off red state America's allowance, they keep demanding smaller government anyways, and start taxing corporate America. The problem could be solved.
2
Perhaps something other than deficits fueled the Tea Party.
3
Nice essay Philip Klein. I too care about the growing deficit. Are you supporting that ugly idea, starve the beast? Grow the deficit as a way to pressure the cutting of the safety net. Social Security and Medicare allow older Americans to grow old and die with some dignity. It was created when a large percentage, maybe half?, of older Americans lived in poverty. So don’t forget to emphasize undoing unneeded and unfair tax cuts and loopholes for the rich. Let's test my argument.
From Nasi.org: "Before Social Security, in 1934, roughly one half of seniors were estimated to be poor. Most had to rely on family or friends, or go to the poor house. As ever more seniors paid into Social Security and then received retirement benefits, the poverty rate among seniors steadily declined from circa 50 percent in the Great Depression to 35 percent in 1959, 25 percent in 1970, 15 percent in 1975, and around 10 percent in 2000, where it has hovered ever since. Today, were it not for Social Security, the senior poverty rate would be 43.5 percent, and just over half (PDF) of elderly African Americans (51 percent) and Latinos (52 percent) would be poor."
David Lindsay Jr. is the author of “The Tay Son Rebellion” and blogs at InconvenientNews.net.
Republican concerns about the national debt and budget deficits only surfaces when Democrats are in power.
Generally speaking, GOP presidents have run up huge amounts of debt, mainly to finance unnecessary wars and give huge tax cuts to the wealthy. Obama was one of the few democrats to raise the debt - but lets not forget he inherited the worst recession since the 1920's and a hugely depleted tax base as a result of rampant Bush caused unemployment and tax cuts. yes Bush spent his political capital alright.
Most democratic presidents have come into office faced with hugely increased levels of GOP manufactured debt. Day one of any Democratic administration, the GOP starts bleating about the national debt. Paul Ryan being a poster child example of hypocrisy. But there are many more. Poor old John Bohner - no wonder he was always crying.
The GOP is the party of rule or ruin. If they are not in the drivers seat - they do everything possible to destroy what the elected government is trying to do. e.g. Obamacare, TARP, etc.
Trump voters - don't listen to tweets and Rush, do a bit of basic research and you will learn that your orange man has suckered you all into voting for his uuuge personal enrichment and that of his cronies. Your tax benefits expire in 2025, but His are permanent.
3
Conservatives are by nature those who want to either maintain status quo or return to some Gilded Age of "thrift and accountability" that didn't even include Income Taxes. They look back. And what would have happened after the Great Depression had we said, Oh, let's go back to horse and buggy and not build these roads, dams, bridges and railways using dollars we do not yet have? Let's let these jobless people dig for roots and eat berries?
Going back is always the Conservative goal. Progressives, look ahead. And to progress we mean clearly to go forward with a plan. So now, those hypocrites, to get their way, seek to return to the very Gilded Age that brought the Great Depression on our forebears' heads. When Conservatives increase the deficit, oh it's just dandy. When someone else does it, it's a travesty and un patriotic. Hypocrites, all of them! Find the Middle Way.
1
Republicans have not been fiscally conservative at the federal level since the 1980s - their fiscal policy recipe calls for increasing military spending and cutting taxes. Their antipathy for social welfare expenditures primarily targets programs that serve the poor (rather than the elderly, despite Medicare and Social Security being the projected drivers of expanded future deficits), which together account for only a small portion of the federal budget.
Trump is not a conservative. He is either a mafia don or a fascist.
7
Your wrong about social security costs. Social security is funded separately by worker's contributions and the matching contributions of their employers. It has nothing to do with the national debt.
It is clear that deficits don't matter as much as conservatives and the Tea Party thought they did, but I would like to see a good analysis of how much debt is sustainable. Perhaps it could be based on the interest paid on the debt compared to the increase in taxes derived from the investments of the money borrowed.
2
The author mentions "increase in the retirement-age population that is driving up spending on Medicare and Social Security. " but fails to mention the recent large tax cuts. The corp tax rate was reduced to10% indefinitely, and this was done without even requiring that companies do something (anything!)to get the low rate (like offer better salaries, more benefits), meanwhile the deficit spirals out of control. Any correlation between lowered taxes and higher deficit. You bet there is! Trickle-down economics results in the middle class and the poor getting but a trickle, but the deficit gets a huge increase. Instead of calling it "trickle down" they should call it "deficit deluge" economics.
2
Yet another screed of bean-counter sanctimony provoked by an overdue realization that Grover Norquist economics and national Republican " fiscal prudence" (like national Republican "patriotism") have been revealed as fraudulent and will no longer have the voting booth potency they had in the late 20th century.
"Enormous, crushing tax increases"? (They are always enormous and crushing from the perspective of those whose ideal is a government small enough to drown in a bathtub, aren't they?) Put those increased tax revenues to use in climate remediation, infrastructure, public education and social services, and discover just how un-crushing they will prove to be. For those who respect market signals, as presumably Mr Klein does, it should be apparent that Mr Market is shouting now -- and will scream louder the longer he is ignored -- that the highest returns to investment are now in public, not private, spheres.
2
Zombie Conservatism should be put out of our misery. It should die.
3
Philip Klein is an alarmist. He's intentionally conflating deficits with debt. The CBO speculated deficits will grow from 4.2 percent of GDP in 2019 to 8.7 percent in 2049. Hardly an earth shattering figure compared to any country with public medicine, education, and retirement. That's nothing compared to modern social democracies and they're doing fine.
Most of the increase in public debt is due to interest on principal. Interest rates are not expected to stay low forever. Hence, you're paying more on outstanding principle. That's where the 144 percent figure originates.
This outcome does not result from government borrowing or running high deficits. Our problem is Republicans keep reducing government revenues in very inefficient ways. Zombie economics. Reagan style tax cuts do not pay for themselves. Public debt is the proof. Aging Reaganites have spent the past 40 years stealing from the system. They refuse to pay for the services they consume.
Far from decreasing services, we need to rebuild them in light of decades of neglect. Infrastructure is the obvious example. Think of US infrastructure like one giant New York subway system. There is a century of deferred maintenance preventing the system from running efficiently. We actually need to spend more in the near term in order to correct a backlog of negligence.
The trick is to stick the tax burden on the negligent. News flash to conservatives: Your bill has come due. Young people aren't paying for your mistakes.
2
No mention of the defense budget? Also, SS and Medicare both bring in revenues, unlike farm subsidies and goodies at the Dept of Defense. This is an important subject but this particular analysis rather weak...
4
Tax the rich, corporations and capital gains at a much higher rate. Tax wealth, not just income. Eliminate tax exemptions for all nonprofits. Cut the military budget by 75%.
5
I find Mr. Klein’s appraisal of socialism disingenuous, people like Klein seem to decry socialism, yet line up for FEMA, purchase cheap insurance for people that live in flood prone areas, regular insurance companies would charge thousands of dollars a month in premiums to cover the inevitable rebuilding costs, subsidized by tax payers to keep premiums low, we subsidize the over production of dairy products meaning farms, and by the way, some of the largest farms in the country were corporate owned, received a lining share of the 30 billion in government subsidies because of a poorly thought out easy to win trade war, the gamer really hurt received on average 5 grand. The list of government subsidies is long, and the biggest recipients of subsidies are the multi billion dollar companies. Companies like Exxon, Amazon, Apple, all receive subsidies, all told 100 billion a year of free tax payer money is funneled into corporate coffers, for things like renewable energy. In school I was taught that corporations invested a percentage of their own corporate profit back into R&D, because that’s how they used raise their stock value. Now corporations can write off the costs of issuing stock options as a form of paying executives, except it doesn’t cost one dime for a company like Amazon to issue a stock options since, the companies buy back their own stock, artificially raise the value of their stock and excersize their stock options, and payday. www.itep.org
2
Governments are not the only entities that are removing money from our pockets. Our health care system excels beyond that of any other country in removing money from our pockets, and threatens to make health care so expensive that it already kills off some of its customers who have expensive ailments (of which diabetes has become one example). Housing also removes much money from our pockets, and getting from affordable housing to our workplaces removes both money from our pockets and time from our lives.
Small government allows these entities to dig deeper into our pockets by allowing them to use their power to make us offers we cannot refuse, or present us with a menu of unpalatable items from which we must choose or go hungry.
1
I'm a fervent Trump supporter with the huge exception of the national debt he is racking up. What could be less conservative than crushing the next generations with massive amounts of debt! I believe that Trump will win a resounding reelection victory despite this impeachment madness and I hope that he brings in a Republican Congress with him. At that point, chastened Democrats might sit down with Trump and craft a bipartisan deal to deal with problem of the debt. Any resolution has to be bipartisan and would mean that the Democrats would have to abandon the crazy spending schemes of Elizabeth Warren. This national debt issue is the moral equivalent of war and I believe that there are enough patriots among both parties who realize this tidal wave of debt must be dealt with.
1
@Alex
I'm sorry, Republicans had their chance. They held both houses of Congress during Mr. Trump's first two years in office, and what did they do? Pass enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that completely failed to trickle down and have further increased wealth inequality. What on earth makes you think it would be any different in a second Trump term?
@Alex the GOP controlled both houses of Congress during Trump's first two years and look what happened. The GOP has had its chance and they blew it. As long as voters like you believe the lie that the GOP knows or cares about fiscal responsibility, nothing will change. And, as stated in the article, Trump/GOP voters are generally older and more dependent on federal spending, so the party has no incentive to care about the issue. For the sake of the country, please consider changing your vote in 2020.
@Alex
re the following astounding assertion:
I believe that there are enough patriots among both parties who realize this tidal wave of debt must be dealt with.
Whatever made you think this? Have you not
been attending to this ongoing farce that "deficit hawks" have been engaged in for the last 10 years?
Did you pay any attention to the full blown idiocies
that justified the tax scam of 2017? These were not
statements of patriots. These were not the statements
of anyone serious about addressing the deficit while
it might still be possible without onerous economy
destroying interest rates or social chaos due to
spending cuts.
These were statements by complete cynics you voted for and have the moral responsibility for electing
because they knew they could keep the wool pulled over your eyes.
When you and your like minded confreres stop believing in supply side economic voodoo, and stop
voting for people who think the laws of economics
vis a vis the economic cycle have been permanently
suspended, then you can start voting for people
who will try and get us out of the quagmire of debt
piled high since 2016 in a socially responsible way.
Fiscal discipline has never really been a conservative goal.
It was a way to cloak the intolerance, fear and hatred that has traditionally guided conservatives.
Now that the social norm has shifted- and that intolerance, fear and hatred can be tweeted daily from the White House- there is no more need for the cloak.
3
i suppose we could have 10 trillion dollar deficits under warren et al, which is the problem, of course. republicans can be a little irresponsible as the alternative is simply bizarro land.
This is entirely the fault of fiscal conservatives and their moral cowardice. The populist right has now joined with the left over resentment of giant tax breaks given out to corporations and the wealthy, which reached a new low in the Trump-Republican tax deal. Fiscal conservatives need to realize that there will be zero political support for any type of "entitlement reform" until the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes.
In addition, the military has the highest proportion of discretionary spending of the federal budget. A lot of money also goes to subsidies for wealthy farming conglomerates (not the small farms that conservatives idealize). Until fiscal conservatives take a stand against these two types of spending, they will look like hypocrites.
Finally climate change means ever-increasing federal expenditures to both mitigate natural disasters like floods and fires, and rebuild homes in disaster-prone areas. But the incredulous denial from conservatives that climate change is even a problem means these expenditures will only continue to go up.
If fiscal conservatives actually take a stand against big tax breaks against the wealthy/corporations, military/corporate spending, and climate change denial, then their concerns will be taken seriously. Until then, they have nobody to blame but themselves.
3
I love it when conservatives try and sneak in lines that conflate Social Security with federal spending. Social Security spending does not add one cent to the deficit.
22
Most European countries (and Japan) would love to have only the US level of debt. And when your debt is denominated in a currency you can print, there is even less to worry about. That said, Trump's tax cut was recklesss and pointless.
4
See Krugman's column today. Deficit concerns were always about cutting social programs and obstructing Democrats, not about economics.
There seems to be so little concern for truth in current Republicans, as shown by their defense of Trump, rather than looking at facts.
140
@Michael So true..republicans spend Luke drunken sailors in port when in power and pretend to be concerned about deficits when in opposition.. hypocrites each and everyone.. more of this trend should be shouted about by democrats running for president imho
7
Sadly....it's the price the GOP must pay for:
1.) Top 1% tax breaks
2.) Environmental Compliance reductions
3.) Stacking the Judiciary
6
"But when...the bill for decades of fiscal recklessness comes due, conservatives will regret that they squandered so much time ...rather than doing anything to address the federal debt."
Convervatives will NEVER show this regret.
27
Trump never ran on decreasing the deficit.
@KR Donald Trump said he would pay off the national debt. So, I guess you can say he didn't run on reducing the deficit, but it would be impossible to pay off the debt while the annual deficit is increasing. Republicans are not hypocritical about the deficit. They have an agenda: cut taxes first, and then cut spending for social programs as a way out of the deficit. When a Democrat is President focusing on the deficit is a legitimate means to stop expansion of spending. Cutting taxes is sacrosanct, and raising taxes is not a legitimate way to reduce deficits. That's the first commandment of the Republican creed.
6
@KR
Actually, Trump ran on that lie and a thousand others and the Snake Oil voters drank it up....sad.
"We're not a rich country. We're a debtor nation...We've got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt," Trump told The Washington Post in April 2016, several months before the election he would win. "I think I could do it fairly quickly...I would say over a period of eight years"
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-deficit-debt-cbo-data-obama-1463802
3
I find Mr. Klein's attempt to make an honest appraisal of the Republican mantle of fiscal responsibility and his acknowledgement of the failure of the Republican party to act on any of it's fiscal conservatism rhetoric noteworthy in it's effort to give credibility to his argument. His failure, however, to note that Democrats that have presided over the deficit reduction and balancing budgets efforts over last half century reveals a lack of interest in identifying opportunities for developing sound bipartisan fiscal policy. This opinion piece is more of the dream on notion that the GOP, the party of tax cut and spend, will some how change its hypocritical behavior.
5
Like most other major issues facing our nation and the world (i.e. climate change, income inequality, gun violence), the Republican philosophy is deny and ignore the facts. Fiscal irresponsibility is just another example of this. The Great Depression was essentially ignited by Herbert Hoover. The 2008 Recession found George W. Bush absolutely asleep at the switch. Now we have Trump spending on tax cuts benefiting billionaires and the military at unprecedented levels causing records deficits. The simple facts are that Democrats (Roosevelt, Clinton, Obama, etc.) are much better money managers. They may tax and spend, but it is on things that actually benefit the public and they have a much better handle on controlling the flow. Fact.
29
Democrats run deficits to combat recessions and pay for the social safety net. Republicans run them to build up the military and “pay” for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. Republicans pretend to care about the deficit. Democrats are honest about what they’re doing. It’s really that simple.
63
Conservatives don’t care about the deficit and they haven’t for a long time. Neither do they care about business. They want the rich to be richer relative to the poor because they believe the rich deserve to be richer and the poor deserve to be poorer. There are only cultural conservatives.
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@roseberry
This is, sadly, the most accurate description of American conservatism. It is, and always has been, morally and intellectually bankrupt.
3
@roseberry ,
Thanks, you answered the question implicitly asked by the Rush Limbaugh quote in the piece - "What ARE you guys then?"
A: Cultural Conservatives.
@roseberry
Or good Calvinists who thought that wealth on earth was evidence of God's favor.... (apparently no matter how that wealth was obtained.) The founders of the country did believe in opportunity for themselves.
DJT proclaimed himself to be the King of Debt as well as stating that if things got to bad he would negotiate a better deal. i.e. default. Why anyone wasn't scared silly and doesn't take him at his word is beyond me. How anyone who claims to be a fiscal conservative could vote for him is reprehensible. He knows that he will be out of office (hopefully sooner rather than later) and that the US Debt will no longer be his problem; in fact he will just blame someone else. This has always been his business model but this time it is even easier for him. In this case he won't have to declare personal bankruptcy or stiff contractors who can't afford to fight in order to renegotiate his debt as he has done so many times in his personal business dealings.
9
"In contrast, the current debt is not from a one-off event, such as a major war or economic downturn, but from the combination of rising health care costs and an increase in the retirement-age population that is driving up spending on Medicare and Social Security. "
Oh c'mon. The debt is also from tax cuts enacted by Donald Trump and the Republican Congress to benefit the rich elite of which they are members.
More generally, any debt is a combination of spending and taxation decisions, so to assert like here that the debt *only* comes from spending is completely bogus. Raise taxes on the rich - no more debt.
108
Mr. Klein, who has a degree in journalism, has yet to predict an actual economic crisis (housing bubble? financial crisis?), while he has predicted quite a few which never happened, among them, an Obamacare debacle which he described as a "government takeover" of health care (so what if all the providers are private?).
Maybe the country has listened too often to right-wing prophets driven not by expertise but ideology?
84
True that under Trump we have entered an era of rapidly growing , unprecedented debt. Does anyone remember Reagan's illustration of how far a trillion one-dollar bills can extend into the outer reaches of space? But in spite of all this borrowing we have spent very little on making necessary repairs on our infrastructure or lowering the elements (such as carbon) that are making our climate dangerous for survival or extending adequate medical care for everyone, even preexisting conditions.
Why? Because in the list of priorities for Republican "conservatives" the first and main concern is to remove the government from our pockets and from our lives. Down with taxes! At the same time , remove government from regulation and inspection, the heavy hand of government telling us how to run our businesses (also saving costs of regulators and inspectors)---thus allowing Boeing to charge extra for additional safety features in their new troubled planes, making it apparent that the planes could be safer but profits are more important than lives. The government goes along because Republicans abhor any interference by government, as hurtful as this neglect might be.
8
Republicans have historically been the most egregious spenders over the past 40 years. Democrats have been the adult in the room when it comes to controlling unnecessary spending. Anyone recall the 'bridge to nowhere?' Yeah, a Republican money grab when the Clinton administration produced surpluses. Almost a half-billion dollars was allocated to build this thing in Alaska for 40 residents. Yeah, Republican fiscal responsibility at its best.
4
Historically, the deficit goes down under democrats and up under republicans in the elections since Reagan. Most of this article is some made up fabrication that republicans are more fiscally responsible - that simply isn't true.
Democrats need to start taking on that narrative that they are not fiscally responsible, because historically, they are.
There are ways to have social programs with responsible taxes - it is possible to do both and work on the deficit.
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/jul/29/tweets/republican-presidents-democrats-contribute-deficit/
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@Steph Mueller Couldn't agree more. Democrats need to be shouting this from the rooftops
5
Wonderful, an existential threat to conservatism means that the Republic might be able to survive,--conservatism having severely eroded the nation.
19
I'm sorry, but increasing deficits then only complaining when the Democrats are in power is a hallmark of modern conservatism. Reagan, W.Bush, and Trump have all increased the deficit during their terms. They only complain when the Democrats hold the Presidency.
At some point, what you do is what you are and not what you say. Conservatism for the last 40 years has increased deficits and tax cuts for the wealthy (mostly). Conservatism as they have governed is not decrease in spending and fiscal discipline, but tax cuts with increased spending. Otherwise the American economy would total falter as in did in the early 1980s (Reagan Recession) Conservatives tried what they propose to believe, but realized that wouldn't keep them in office, so they have governed with increasing deficits ever since. "deficits don't matter as Reagan should us" has been the governing philosophy.
18
@Geoff
Let’s not forget to mention, these same elected officials are busy decrying Trumps impeachment as fake, Trump assails the “phony” Emolument clause. When republicans do that, they are attacking the very foundations of this country. And if we allow people like Trump, Graham, Moscow Mitch, to begin to undermine the constitution and the powers it gives to the house and by extension the party that has the majority. When we allow that to happen, at what point does Trump and company begin trashing other parts of the constitution because it runs contrary to their ideals, until sadly we don’t have a representative government, responsive to the voter or not (that can be fixed) it’s still our (the peoples) government.
Trump and company is there because voters allow it to happen, government gets their power from the voters. Jefferson believed that the constitution was a living document, that changes over time, as societies change, Jefferson believed every generation should look at the constitution to build a better society, many things happening today, Jefferson and company couldn’t have foreseen. They did however see someone like Trump, which is why they wrote in a way to remove a president from office, a high crime and misdemeanor could be anything, but the framers believed a violation of public trust was enough.
4
The anti-deficit rhetoric from the GOP has been nothing more than rhetoric for over 20 years. Instead, the GOP is playing a long game - the strategy has been to increase the deficit as much as possible (ideally through tax cuts) with an ultimate goal of choking off entitlements as fiscal policy becomes increasingly constrained. Trump is but a cog (albeit unexpected, and unexpectedly effective) in that machine. The strategy will ultimately fail, but the damage will be great. The result of the tax cuts driving the strategy is a degree of inequality which is becoming increasingly unpalatable to a large swath of American society (and this is playing out on the world stage too). The question is whether the American people choose to swing the pendulum back (Biden, Harris, O’Rourke, Buttigieg) or blow up the system entirely (Sanders, Warren). Which is not to say Prez Trump (or Pence) can’t or won’t win in 2020. Either way, he GOP - led by Moscow Mitch - is truly playing the long game. They are playing chess. The Dems struggling to play checkers.
13
Cutting social services is the objective of high deficits. It's been one of the pillars of conservatism for many decades. "Entitlements" and "free stuff" are just terms until it's pointed out that they are Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act.
It's a swell initiative if you are a millionaire or in the oil business. But if you old and dependent on your "entitlements" to survive, it's a matter of life or death. Life or death, not metaphorically. Literally.
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@cjg
Why oh why do they continue to win elections?
4
Conservatives always say deficits are rising because of mounting Social Security and health costs. But deficits rose under Obama to deal with the financial crisis, not safety net programs, and then shrank by half in his second term. They are skyrocketing under Trump for the same reason they skyrocketed under George W Bush and Reagan—unnecessary and steep tax cuts for rich people.
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@Jake Roberts
And corporations.
9
@Jake Roberts
The GOP Wants debt. That way they can Starve the Beast. Look it up. They want to run up do much debt that they can use it as an excuse to cut/end Social Security and Medicare. No less a GOPer than Paul Ryan has said so.
Really. Look it up
Starve the Beast
@Jake Roberts
And increased defense spending.
Dear Mr. Klein:
Please define what you mean by entitlements? Is it Social Security and Medicare, which I have paid for via payroll deductions my entire working career? No, hands off - not giving that up so that a multinational and/or billionaire can have a tax break. Maybe the American people will finally get off their sofa and turn off the NFL to protest that move.
So tell me Mr. Klein, do entitlements include corporate welfare like subsidies to Big Oil and Big Pharma? How about a defense industry that is larger than the next eight countries put together? Or the carried interest loophole so that hedge fund managers have a lower tax rate than a NYC policeman or fireman?
Please advise us Mr. Klein. Inquiring minds want to know.
510
@DeeBee .. .if Entitlement means I am entitled, allowed, to now use the money I paid into the system, and my deceased husband paid into the system all our lives, then yes, I certainly agree. I am entitled because we paid our dues to get into the system. I am proud to have done so, and I agree with you that to lessen the benefits of we who have worked hard all our lives for the betterment of everyone is a disgrace. Those of us who depend on Medicare and Social Security are the Patriots who believed in our country. I still believe in our country and only want even more people to benefit from their hard work as they age. And corporate billionaires might learn what it is to work hard all their lives and then end up scratching for rent when they no longer can work. Thanks you for your comment. I agree completely.
51
@DeeBee --Exactly! And Republicans always forget that the word "entitlement" is not a terrible word. If you are "entitled" to something it means you have earned it, one way or another. I have reminded Righties of this over and over and sometimes they are actually astonished. Why they say, we need to reform entitlements, I ask why? People have paid in social security their whole lives so they are entitled to it--tell me why getting what you have paid into is unfair and they don't have a word to say. The GOP has dirtied this word, just as they have have sneered the word "liberal" for so long, as though a word that literally means "open to new ideas," is something horrifying. We need to push back. Well done.
39
@DeeBee
Please don't fall for the Republican trick of corrupting the English language.
Entitlement is neither a slur nor an epithet.
It is this:
Having the right to do something.
It is not the belief that one is special, though Republicans would have it that way.
23
Movement built around alleviate citizen burden?
The rich and corporations place the burden on citizens. Government, properly managed, alleviates that burden. It's called taxing the rich and taxing and regulating the corporations.
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@Murray Bolesta Right on...
@Murray Bolesta
Mr. Klein apparently thinks only the 1% are citizens.